Employers consider applicants’ soft skills

You’ve polished your résumé, updated your references and picked up your best business outfit from the dry cleaners. You are ready for that big job interview.

But while your experience and qualifications may perfectly match the position for which you are applying, have you given any thought to the soft skills you have to offer an employer?

Soft skills include a person’s attitude, workplace behavior, values and ethics. Increasingly, employers are looking at soft skills as the deciding factor when choosing between two applicants.

Harry Weimann, director of education at WyoTech college in Blairsville, Pa., and a business owner since 1986, said he wishes he had learned the secret of choosing the perfect job candidate for long ago.

“As a business owner for many years, I’ve hired several employees,” he said. “Some were talented workers, but I never could pinpoint why I rarely got the person I was looking for. Working for WyoTech opened my eyes to what I was missing — soft skills.”

Weimann said that, in many cases, employers view an employee who shows up on time, performs the job correctly and respects others as being more valuable than an employee who is technically competent but shows up late, is sloppily dressed and has a poor attitude. Because of this, employers are looking harder at applicants’ soft skills when hiring in the current market.

“For some reason, organizations seem to expect people to know how to behave on the job or have the right soft skills,” Weimann said. “The assumption is that everyone knows the importance of being on time, being accountable, having integrity and being a team player — but is that fair to expect without communicating that during the interview process?”

When you head to that big interview, you should expect to face some soft-skill questions. These may include: What is your definition of integrity? What does it mean to be accountable? What is your definition of common sense? What is your definition of customer service? What are your feelings regarding deadlines? How do you handle high-pressure situations? Give an example of how you’ve resolved a conflict in the past. Make sure you are able to answer each of these questions with the same accuracy and confidence you would apply to any question about your résumé or previous work experience. As employers continue to search for candidates with the right professional and soft skills, it is up to you to prove that you are qualified in both categories.