Entering the workforce, and recruiting from within it, is vastly different than in years past.

Employers lament about the prevailing skills shortage and the cramp it puts on their hiring efforts—CEOs globally consider the current talent shortage to be the top emerging risk for their companies.

Meanwhile, jobseekers express frustration that the traditional career path of getting an education (or learning a skill), getting a job, and then staying at that job until they retire seems to be vanishing. 

Today, when organizations are hard-pressed to find qualified talent and workers are accustomed to upskilling, adapting to emerging technologies, and job-hopping, a certain classification of skills has emerged as the new differentiator: soft skills. 

While hardly a new phenomenon, the softer set of skills is getting a larger share of the spotlight and matter more now than ever before. 

We’ll cover a few of the more important soft skills in 2020 and explain why they matter.

Key soft skills to look for

Creativity

Perhaps the most evergreen of all soft skills, creativity continually tops the list of most desirable soft skills for organizations across all industries (it’s topped LinkedIn’s top 5 most in-demand soft skills list for back to back years). 

Employees who can creatively approach problems and tasks and consistently deliver solutions are incredibly valuable for virtually every business role. Identifying individuals who are intellectually agile can be a bit tricky, though. 

Be sure to ask open-ended questions that allow room for candidates to explain past scenarios where they displayed creative problem-solving. 

Growth mindset

Business is now conducted during an era of rapid change. New impactful technologies sprout up weekly and assert their effects over a variety of processes. The responsibilities of any given role can change dramatically over the course of a year and workers are forced to scramble to adapt. 

An individual that scores high in the “growth mindset” soft skill believes that their talents can be developed through hard work and feedback and are thus well-positioned to rise to the dynamic challenges of the modern workplace. 

Conversely, an individual scoring low in this soft skill believes that their talents are set in stone and unchangeable.

Being able to identify a growth mindset skill among candidates can be hugely important for specific roles; ask candidates to share examples of when a role they had in the past changed and how they adapted to it. 

Collaboration

For as much as a technically gifted employee can accomplish in their individual role, today organizations are putting an increasing amount of emphasis on one’s ability to collaborate with others. 

High-performing teams will always outpace a high-performing individual and companies are beginning to select for individuals who have demonstrated a willingness and ability to work well with others to achieve a common goal. 

There’s a reason the maxim “teamwork makes the dream work” has been so well known for so long. No matter how talented a certain candidate may be, if they are difficult to work and struggle to be an effective team member, the workplace will almost certainly suffer. 

Take time when evaluating candidates to make sure they express a genuine earnestness to collaborate and be a helpful contributor to a larger team. Ask them to provide examples of successful collaboration at prior roles (or, maybe even more effective, examples of unsuccessful collaboration).

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