To make your organization successful, you need employees with excellent soft skills.
Soft skills make a person a better candidate for you and a good colleague for your existing employees.
Your candidates might have the necessary technical skills. Still, suppose they don’t have the required soft skills. In that case, they will struggle to perform, which will ultimately reflect on your organization’s progress in a negative way.
To hire a developer that is an excellent fit for your company, you need to assess the soft skills too. Technical and programming skills will make them execute the project. Still, the soft skills will ultimately help them communicate and get results for you.
According to LinkedIn’s 2019 Global Talent Trends report, 89 percent of recruiting managers say the usual reason a hire doesn’t work out is a lack of soft skills.
Let us discuss the top 10 essential skills you need to assess while hiring developers.
1. Communication
Ideas can’t be designed until they are appropriately communicated, bringing us to the first skill, communication. Communication is key in any profession, not just with developers.
A skilled developer should be able to discuss his project with the client and his team members. They need to simplify the facts for others to grasp your ideas quickly.
An essential aspect of effective communication is listening. They must pay attention to the opinions and recommendations of their teammates, subordinates, and seniors.
If you’re hiring a developer for a leadership position, you must ensure they are outstanding at communication skills.
2. Flexibility
One must always welcome change and embrace it. The majority of the technology that we have today was not available around a decade ago. The developer you hire must be flexible to adapt to current trends and technologies.
Moreover, it would be best if you had someone who should be willing to put in extra effort to learn the innovations and technologies necessary for the implementation of projects.
3. Teamwork
Proper teamwork promotes efficiency. It unites people, creates a good environment, and creates more opportunities for growth for every member of your organization.
Moreover, Suppose your developer has good soft skills in working as a team player. In that case, there will be fewer conflicts, and even if there is a conflict, it will come to a resolution easier.
Your developer might have to work on tight deadlines and get things done. If they are good team players, they will help others, seek help politely, and meet deadlines quicker.
Teamwork enables a creative approach and hence enhances accountability.
4. Patience
While some people get everything right immediately, others take more time. Dealing with people patiently in situations of hassle is essential, especially for developers. Patience is not only a virtue, and it’s a skill.
Your software developers might deal with clients who don’t understand coding. They might have to deal with people expecting instant changes, and it requires patience to deal with such situations.
5. Open-mindedness
Even the worst ideas can lead to something fantastic. You need developers who are open to new ideas and experiments. They should be okay with new ideas by the team members and managers and be confident with their own ideas too.
Also, they can have many new ideas, but not all ideas will become a reality. They should be comfortable with their ideas being rejected.
They should be open to fresh suggestions, not just from your staff but also from other members of the organization and clients.
6. Presentation
Presentation and communication skills go hand in hand. Your developers must have presentation skills if they want to communicate effectively.
A developer is effective in communicating the process and the final result. The presentation style, the clarity of thoughts, and making the communication crystal clear is essential. They should be able to sell their idea to the C- Suites executives and clients when necessary.
7. Time management
Knowing how to manage time is an essential skill for a developer. There will be times when they have to meet deadlines, and other priority work will come in.
They need to be smart with setting goals. They should be clear with important and urgent tasks. They should understand what kinds of tasks they need to delegate and automate.
Your developers and the team need to keep track of the time and execute the projects. Time management is an important quality that could get better with time.
8. Creativity
The skill that sets the best developers apart is creativity. It is when they are confident in taking unconventional routes and thinking out of the box.
The best hires are masters in technical concepts and creative with their thought processes.
It is challenging to assess creativity as a skill. But with Testlify, there are test libraries dedicated to cognitive abilities and attention to detail, and other skills that reflect creativity.
9. Accountability
Accountability is taking responsibility and ownership of the tasks and the projects. It is a personal accountability that makes a person disciplined for a task and leading a team.
An accountable developer will own their mistakes and ensure they don’t repeat them. They will be serious about meeting the deadlines and never surprise you with unexpected low performance.
10. Problem-solving
If the core job of a developer could be put into one skill, it is problem-solving. The job of a developer is to make life easier, and it is finding the problems and fixing them.
It would help if you had a developer who is ready to make extra efforts during contingencies. They should have attention to detail about spotting the problems that could become major later on. They need to have the energy that helps the team in solving problems.
Final Thoughts
Developers need to have strong technical and soft skills. And their soft skills will make your organization grow and sustain. A developer with excellent soft skills brings positive energy and a cheerful vibe to a project.
Hiring developers with soft skills used to be challenging previously, but with assessment platforms like Testlify, it is a piece of cake.
Testlify offers test libraries that you could use in your hiring process. Testify makes it very easy and effective for you to assess the candidates’ soft skills and their technical skills.
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