“Soft skills get little respect but will make or break your career!”
~ Peggy Klaus, Author, The Hard Truth About Soft Skills
“Communication skills – or lack thereof can make or break you career” Peggy briefs about the shallow and momentary traits of virtual connections and how developing meaningful soft skills is a hard thing to achieve if your communications are quicker and more impersonal. That’s where the modern recruitment systems spend a lot of resources; to make sure every candidate appearing for an interview possess the interpersonal soft skills alongside having a robust knowledge and skillsets in the domain. Thus, making this blog a must-read for aspiring interviewees.
The Importance Of Soft Skills At A Workplace
Integrity is a personality trait employers look for while hiring best candidates – candidates who can adapt to varying adverse situation at a workplace. As we have heard from top-level recruiters, the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, and Result) method is used to assess a candidate’s behaviour and test out if they have got the right skills to be successful.
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While it’s impossible to reconstruct one’s personality, a potential candidates can highlight soft skills they possess. To guide you on what specific questions recruiters ask, we have put together the 10 highly asked interview questions on soft skills. Keep reading and learn how to respond with your finest answers to soft skill questions in interviews.
Ques 1 Tell me something about yourself and your experience at your previous workplace.
Ans: Collaboration being a huge part in my previous role, learning how to communicate within the department was a valuable trait that I earned. From figuring out the best talents to delegating responsibilities to meet deadlines, my communication skills have benefitted me. I am excited to bring the same ethics to make this company better.
Ques 2 Can you share a moment when you had to guide your team through an adverse situation?
Ans: I was tasked with the Team Lead responsibility in a web design project in which the UX designer dropped out due a personal issue. I immediately scheduled a meeting and delegated the task to a freelance developer who was also avid in UX design. I think my immediate judgement to outsource talent is worth adding to my traits.
Ques 3 How would you explain the responsibilities in a product if your coworkers are unfamiliar with the skillsets?
Ans: In my previous role as a full-stack web developer, I had to explain the new software functionality to sales employees. Despite the technical jargon that most of them weren’t associated with, I noted how each feature could improve their productivity and I was glad to see the new sales reps asked attentive questions about the product.
Ques 4 What do you seek in a company while applying to a position?
Ans: Having a cooperative manager, excellent company culture and the ability to implement feedback from all tiers of employees are three fundamental ethics I always try to find. Companies that allow employee satisfaction certainly benefits from peak performance and development and I value a company’s emphasis on good culture.
Ques 5 What is your greatest failure at work and what have you learnt from it?
Ans: As a sales executive, I once failed to meet the sales targets for a consecutive two months. However, once the reports came in, I immediately scheduled a meeting with my supervisor and developed a strategy to make a few numbers of cold emails before I finish the day. Luckily, it worked and the total sales revenue increased by 22%.
Ques 6 What’s your approach to stress management when you have too many deadlines to meet?
Ans: My previous role as an Editorial Exec required me to shuffle between a lot of different projects at once. Luckily, I knew about the importance of jotting down tasks that allowed me peak productivity even at stressful times. Writing down tasks on sticky notes also allows me arrange and delegate tasks according to their given deadlines.
Ques 7 Recall a situation where your manager wasn’t available pressuring you to take a managerial decision.
Ans: Just a day before pitching to a client, I found my Team Lead unavailable without a notice. But that evening we had to prepare a good speaker for the pitch anyhow. So, without waiting for my Team Lead to show up, I picked a guy from my team who was great at public speaking. This also allowed me to understand skills of my colleagues.
Ques 8 Are you a good listener or a good speaker?
Ans: In my experience, before one becomes a good speaker, he needs to be a good listener. Especially at an executive role, a good listener always hears out his team first before taking important decisions. On the other hand, the art of listening attentively meaningful things and interpreting them is more essential than just communicating.
Ques 9 What’s your approach to dealing with coworkers who lack enthusiasm?
Ans: As a Team Leader, I have noticed that a few employees underperform, not because they lack enthusiasm, but because they miss out on key knowledge and information related to the project. In that situation I often spend a considerable amount of resources to retrain them alongside arranging playful activities to keep them connected.
Ques 10 How do you handle constructive criticism and what does it mean to you?
Ans: In my opinion, constructive criticism is important at a workplace as it provides valuable feedback that can allow teams to get better suggestions and improve efficiency. As inputs from multiple people in the management are put together, constructive criticism also values opinions to bring some positive improvements in the workflow.
Conclusion
Preparing your soft skills is just as important as having the domain knowledge in your interview preparation. So take your first step to acing the interview by practicing our compilation of highly asked interview questions on soft skills.
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