While your resume and relevant experience will get you to the interview, it won’t necessarily land you the job. Employers also place a high value on the soft skills you hold and how those skills influence your job performance. In this article, we’ve outlined the top 10 soft skills you should clearly communicate in your next interview, in addition to your hard skills and relevant experience. By highlighting these soft skills, you’ll have a leg up on similar candidates with equally relevant experience!
Top 10 Soft Skills:
Communication
Dependability
Team Work
Creativity
Eager to Learn
Conflict Resolution
Self-discipline
Adaptability
Communication
Communication is important to the employer interviewing you, they want to make sure you can effectively communicate ideas. This isn’t just about your verbal skills, it includes your written and listening skills as well. Highlighting your ability to use your communication skills effectively to reach an end goal will show the employer that you are capable of handling the job. Communication is important to ensure everyone in the company is on the same page, projects are being executed, there are less errors, internal relationships are being built, and productivity is at an all time high.
Dependability
A critical part of being a good member of a company/organization means being dependable. It’s crucial to employers to ensure that you will be able to produce consistent work, follow through with commitments, and hold yourself accountable for everything you need to do. This is a great opportunity to describe to the interviewer a time where you had an important project that had a certain deadline and what you did to reach that deadline on time while still making sure everything was satisfactory.
Team Work
Collaborating ideas within a team arguably brings the best results out of a project. Each individual has the opportunity to give their perspective on a project and contribute their unique skill set which eventually creates innovative ideas. Employers want to know if you have collaborative/teamwork skills because it produces results. This is not only beneficial to the employer but the candidate as well because it allows you to build relationships in the workplace and accomplish something great as a team. To that end, watch the video below where Zuleika Cuevas explains the importance of smiling in your interview.
Creativity
Eagerness to Learn
Demonstrating your willingness to learn is important to employers. They want to see that you are dedicated to the job and willing to take on new challenges in order to perform it best as possible. This is a great quality to display especially if your experience with the role you are interviewing for is lacking. Give the employer examples of steps you are taking to gain new experience. This could be gaining certificates for certain skills online or researching more about the role.
Conflict Resolution
Work environments can become a high stress zone, especially when multiple individuals with different backgrounds, personalities, and ideas are working on a project and trying to reach a deadline. Conflicts are inevitable but how you approach them is what really matters. Having conflict resolution skills tells the employer that you won’t let conflict build over disagreements and will handle it properly. Describe how you work in a collaborative environment and give examples of how you handle conflict in a high pressure situation. When you can diffuse conflict quickly it shows that you are able to communicate effectively and go back to being productive.
Motivation
Employers want to know that you want this position because you are interested and enthusiastic about the role. Looking beyond doing what is expected of you and achieving more in your past positions shows you are a highly motivated individual. The best candidate challenges themselves and looks for ways to strengthen their skills. Conveying to the employer about goals you have set for yourself and how you plan to achieve them in the position you want shows them that you are self-motivated and they can count on you. In the video below, Malla Haridat explains the importance of doing your research before an interview.
Adaptability
Being able to adapt easily to a new position and workplace environment is important for both you and employer alike. Every new job you start comes with a new company structure, values, colleagues, and environment. Starting a new position with an open mind and embracing new changes will make your transition easier. Employers want to make sure that you can adapt to changes easily and be able to transition as quickly as possible to ensure you can respond to unexpected changes with ease.
All of these qualities relate to each other in one way or another which makes it easier to build off of each one during your interview. Each quality showcased together not only makes you an attractive candidate to the employer, but also increases your skill strength and will help you excel in any position. If you are looking to start a new job and put these skills into action TemPositions is always hiring! We have an abundance of job openings that are just a click away.