Hard skills and soft skills are the pillars of modern recruitment! Balancing these skills is essential to building high-performance teams.
Each of these skills brings distinct elements to the table. Hard skills represent technical and profession-specific skills (know-how), which are measurable and often linked to education and acquired experience, while soft skills encompass interpersonal, emotional and behavioural skills (savoir-être). For the modern company, balancing know-how and interpersonal skills is essential to building a high-performance, harmonious team.
When it comes to hard skills, a recruiter generally looks at education, previous work experience and the technical skills required for the job. These are tangible and can be assessed objectively. For a position requiring specific skills such as computer programming or mastery of particular software, hard skills are the primary selection criteria.
Soft skills, on the other hand, although more subtle, are just as crucial. They encompass aspects such as effective communication, assertiveness, collaboration, problem-solving, creativity and time management. These interpersonal skills are often key indicators of an individual’s ability to fit into a team, adapt to change and contribute positively to the company’s culture.
When recruiting, thinking about soft skills often starts with an in-depth understanding of the specific needs of the job and the company culture. For example, a creative environment may value soft skills such as innovation and critical thinking, while a project-based team may place particular importance on collaboration and time management.
Versus Talent Profile offers tools such as PersProfile, based on the colour method, which assesses soft skills using behavioural typologies such as Marston, Jung and Emotional Intelligence. These assessments provide detailed information on an individual’s behavioural preferences, helping recruiters to identify the soft skills required for a given position. In addition, PersProfile 360 offers a 360-degree perspective by collecting feedback from colleagues, providing a complete picture of an individual’s behavioural competencies.
A key point for recruiters is to understand that soft skills are not universal. The relevance of interpersonal skills can vary depending on the role and the sector of activity. For example, the ability to make quick decisions may be crucial in fields such as sales, but less so in research-based fields. Another example: despite all their high-level know-how, a candidate who is very dominant and full of himself is going to represent a real risk for integration into a team! So be careful not to be blinded by technical skills.
In conclusion, the recruiter’s consideration of soft skills versus hard skills is a delicate balance. Versus Talent Profile offers solutions to this problem by providing precise behavioural assessment tools and adapting the assessments to the specific needs of the company. Understanding that soft skills are as important as hard skills, and perhaps even more so in certain contexts, enables companies to build dynamic teams capable of meeting the challenges of a constantly changing professional world.
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