Hard Skills Vs Soft Skills - Don't Fall in the Trap!

We all know that most employees get hired for their hard skills and get fired for the lack of soft ones. Personality is what I call in my book the "the Ace of Spades in the Hiring Game" for a good reason: soft skills most often make the difference between good applicants and the others, but you can't detect some critical soft skill by just asking an applicant to exhibit it. I have never met a candidate who was openly confessing a serious lack of soft skill but I have met thousands of them who pretended to possess many.

Why new employees fail

Contrary to popular belief, technical skills are not the first reason why new hires fail. Instead, interpersonal skills dominate the list, per a survey conducted on 5,247 hiring managers*:

• 26% of new hires fail because they can't accept feedback.
• 23% of new hires fail because they are unable to understand and
  manage emotions.
• 17% of new hires fail because they lack the necessary motivation
  to excel.
• 15% of new hires fail because they have the wrong temperament
  on the job.
• Only 11% fail because they lack the necessary technical skills.

During that study, 812 managers experienced significant more hiring success than their peers. What differentiated their interview approach was their emphasis on interpersonal and motivational issues. So make sure you focus your interviewing energy on applicants' coachability, emotional intelligence, motivation and temperament.

* Mark Murphy, "Why New Hires Fail," LeadershipIQ.com, n.d. Web August 15, 2010.

The most important soft skills

No matter what the job is, you should always check for the following
crucial soft skills:

- Honesty, 
- Willingness (eagerness to work hard and to do new things),
- creativity (ability to create or contribute to new ideas and to
  innovate, find solutions to problems),
- Manageability (ability to accept and implement orders or feedback
  from seniors and colleagues),
- Temperament (general attitude towards others, including team
  work and positive attitude),
- Being challenge-driven,
- Drive/self-motivation,
- Communication skills,
- Tolerance to pressure,
- Analytical capacities.

The No-Fail Hiring System precisely focuses on these invisible, hard-to-detect soft skills. Our confidential interview technique allows you to evaluate each of these personality-related skills with optimal objectivity - sometimes within the first 15 minutes.

Hiring soon? 

Make sure you can detect those "invisible" soft skills early in your selection. Buy the book "No-Fail Hiring" on Amazon on on my website. Also, if you plan to hire at least 3 new employees in the coming months, contact me to receive a FREE phone assessment of your current hiring process. I can help you minimize subjectivity in your evaluation of these vital soft skills as stated above. you can also call 877-831 2299.


Good luck in your hiring missions,

Patrick Valtin, Author of "No-Fail Hiring"
President CEO M2-TEC USA, Inc.