Interviews Define

Interviews Define

Interviews-Define-Bravo

100 questions to determine Soft Skills

From this article, you will learn what is meant by soft skills (flexible skills), why they are important, and how to understand whether a candidate has the necessary soft skills for the job.

In addition, we provide a list of 100 questions that will help you quickly assess the availability and level of flexible skills to help you identify and hire the best candidate for any job.

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What are soft skills?

Soft skills (soft skills, flexible skills) - the candidate's immeasurable personal skills, such as sociability, teamwork, time management, creativity, and so on. Having these skills is essential to ensure effective collaboration between team members and productive work to achieve your business goals.

Unlike hard skills (technical skills), the level of soft skills is difficult to measure, and therefore it is difficult to detect them in the selection process. Although questions on identifying flexible skills usually do not imply “true” or “false” answers, asking them in the process of contact with the candidate is very important. This will help you gain a better understanding of the candidate’s way of thinking, his motivation, his attitude to the team, and the motives for his actions.

Why are flexible skills important?

The best companies are built by people who have not only good technical skills but also strong soft skills - good negotiators, leaders who are able to solve problems effectively.

A recent study published on CareerBuilder, an authoritative American resource, showed that 93% of employees consider soft skills to be no less, if not more important, than the technical skills of their colleagues. The process of business reorganization in order to build powerful, motivated, and effective teams that have good flexible skills was named the main trend of 2016 in the Deloitte study.

How to test candidate soft skills?

The most common way to test a candidate’s soft skills is through an interview process. However, traditional interviews can be very ineffective - so much so that the authors of the Harvard Business Review study suggest conducting quick tests to assess soft skills before conducting any interviews. Thanks to this approach, you can immediately identify candidates with the best soft skills, even before you start evaluating their technical skills - and do it absolutely impartially, based on clear statistics.

Top 100 questions for evaluating soft skills

To help you find out if this candidate has the soft skills necessary to work, we provide a list of 100 questions for assessing soft skills, broken down by topic. You can use these questions when interviewing candidates or, even better, in pre-selection.

Communication skills

Explain the phenomenon of gravity to a 6-year-old child.

Explain to your 80-year-old grandmother how you earn a living.

Use up to 5 offers to sell me your product. Your colleague publicly belittles your work achievements. How do you react? Do you prefer written or oral communication? What is more important for you and why: to be a good listener or a good communicator?

Teamwork

What do you prefer and why: teamwork or work alone?

How important are team events for you? Tell me how you would overcome a situation where a team does not work well because the members do not get along. Your teammates all agree on how to approach the task, but you do not agree. How do you react? What does team spirit mean to you and how would you build it? How would you deal with a teammate who wasn't doing his share of the job?

Management

You know that your manager is 100% wrong in something. What will you do?

Your team members leave one by one. What will you do? How do you feel about delegating responsibilities to a team? What do you expect from a manager? Your company is experiencing financial difficulties, and you have to reduce salary costs. How would you decide who to fire?

Flexibility / adaptability

What is most troublesome change you have experienced in your profession? Do you like surprises?

How do you change your schedule if something unplanned happens? Give me an example when you had to deal with a request for dismissal of your own free will. Do you like a chore?

Solution of problems

Give an example when you have successfully solved the problem.

Give an example when you had to be creative or unconventional in solving a problem.

Give an example when you had to analyze information to successfully solve a problem.

Give an example when you have identified a problem and solved it in the early stages.

Give an example when you had to solve a problem in a crisis.

Creativity

On the off chance that your life was a book, what might it be called? How would you revitalize meetings to increase creativity? Give an example of how a business must be creative in order to be successful. How do you encourage your team to be more creative and innovative? Interpersonal skills. What are the main components for building good relationships with colleagues? How would you manage circumstances where there is a strain among you and a partner? Describe how you would pass on complex or specific information to someone? Tell us about a case when you have built a good relationship with someone who was not to your liking.

Time Management

Do you have multitasking skills? Which phrase describes you better: “done better than perfect” or “everything should look perfect”? How do you prioritize your work if you have several impending deadlines? Tell me about the time you struggled to meet deadlines. What did you do? Your director appoints you a major undertaking directly before the day's end. How would you answer......

Work Ethic

Do you tend to work overtime?

What is the most important work ethic?

Give me an example when you are faced with an ethical dilemma at work.

What would you do if you found that the manager was violating the rules of the company?

You completed your work earlier than you expected. Do you allow yourself a free day or are you going to ask for more tasks?

Customer Skills

Give an example of how you dealt with an unsatisfied customer.

What steps are you taking to gain customer confidence?

Give an example when you have done everything possible to provide good service for a client.

What would you do with a client who, in your opinion, began to find fault?

Motivation and enthusiasm

How do you maintain motivation when working alone on a project?

How do you maintain motivation when working on a project that does not interest you?

How do you arouse enthusiasm in those days when you would like to not be at work?

How do you help colleagues who lack enthusiasm? Which of these aspects is most important for you in your work: career growth, benefits, and bonuses, salary, or a good team? What do you hope to achieve during the first six months of work in our company?

Organization skills

Give an example when your planning has led to effective results.

How do you stay organized when you work on several projects?

How do you track your progress when working on projects?

How often do you go to your desktop, check files, and e-mail to delete what you no longer need?

Negotiation

Describe the difficult negotiation situation you were in. What was the result?

How would you change the standard approach of “we always do this” if you felt that the new approach is better? How would you agree on something with a manager or supervisor? What is your most effective negotiation persuasion technique?

Interviews-Strategic-planning-Define-Bravo

Strategic planning

How do you understand strategic planning? How does it differ from everyday planning?

Tell me how you planned and carried out the big project. What were the results? How would you set long haul objectives for your group? How do you rate performance?

Work with reviews

Explain what constructive criticism means to you.

Your team leader says you did a poor job. How do you answer?

Give an example when you used feedback to improve your work.

How do you prefer to receive feedback from your manager: through official performance reviews or daily / weekly / monthly meetings (1: 1)? Why?

Conflict Resolution

Give an example when you successfully resolved a conflict in a professional situation.

How do you deal with disagreements in the workplace? What steps would you take to resolve the acute conflict that erupted between the two members of your team? How would you reassure a colleague if you saw that his anger could cause problems?

Stress resistance

What are your stress management techniques?

Tell us about your most stressful situation at work. How did you deal with this?

What good ways do you use to prevent stress?

What work do situations cause you the most stress?

Interviews-Decisions-Making-Define-Bravo

Decisions Making

Give an example when you had to make a decision under pressure. How did you deal with this?

Do you like decision-making responsibility or would you rather leave it to someone else?

What was the most troublesome choice you needed to make at work? What have you chosen?

What do you do if you realize that you have made a bad or wrong decision?

What do you consider the most difficult decisions?

Brief conclusions