LinkedIn ' s Jennifer Shappley shares how she sources for soft skills and what to look for in your own candidates .
Six soft skills employers should be looking for in tech talent
LinkedIn ' s Jennifer Shappley shares how she sources for soft skills and what to look for in your own candidates .
Forget experience and hard skills -- tomorrow ' s best talent will need soft skills , and it ' s a fact that sourcing and recruiting pros need to be prepared to address .
" From our own LinkedIn research last May , we know that , of 291 hiring managers we surveyed , their employers struggle to find candidates with the right soft skills for 59 percent of their open jobs , and 58 percent said the lack of soft skills among candidates was ' limiting their company ' s productivity ,'" says Jennifer Shappley , senior director of talent acquisition at LinkedIn at a presentation at SourceCon , held earlier this month in Anaheim , Calif .
The combined forces of fast-changing technology and digital transformation , a tight talent market , increased hiring volume , and improved job-seeker confidence means that the top of the hiring funnel is getting filled with potential candidates , and the challenge will be how to filter through the noise and find the right fit , Shappley says . The differentiator will be soft skills like adaptability , leadership , communication and others , she says . Here , Shappley shares six of the top soft skills she ' s looking for at LinkedIn and how to go about finding these .
1 . Adaptability
Organizations , especially in the IT industry , are constantly changing , growing and evolving to address customer feedback and meet changing market demands . Talent that ' s adaptable will be extremely valuable going forward , Shappley says . " If you ' re not finding the right people who have learning agility , who can listen to feedback and evolve , you ' re not going to do well as a company . You are looking for someone with a ' change orientation ,' who can obviously take on new skills and challenges and thrive . So , what does that look like ? A successful track record across industries and roles . Have they pivoted in their career and focused on challenges ?" she says .
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2 . Culture fit
Though it ' s hard to define , culture fit is an important trend , and one organizations shouldn ' t ignore , Shappley says . " Do candidates share your values ? Do they have a variety of skills they ' d need to succeed ? This one can be problematic in that you don ' t want to ignore diversity and difference of thought and perspective , but sometimes you can look at currently successful employees and ' reverse engineer ' their traits to find candidates ," Shappley says .
3 . Collaboration
Collaboration -- across teams , companies , vendors and partners -- is a key skill for today ' s workforce , Shappley says . " Have candidates worked in a matrixed environment ? What ' s their experience working across teams cross-functionally ? If they ' ve proven they can be successful that way , it ' s a good sign ," she says .