Resourcing | Should employers prioritise soft skills when recruiting employees?

When recruiting a new employee for a role, there are many factors that hiring managers must take into consideration; do they have the right skills for the job, can they handle the workload, and do they have enough experience?

These hard skills provide hiring managers with instant facts about whether the employee is a match and are generally preferred by many as a good indicator of whether they will be hired.

However, times are changing with more recruiting professionals now starting to acknowledge the value of soft skills. For example, earlier this year LinkedIn published its 2019 Global Talent Trends report and in its survey of 5,100 global talent professionals, nine in ten considered soft skills as equally important as hard skills when hiring.

This data rings true with food retailer Co-op, who often prioritise soft skills over a potential employee’s technical offering. “At Co-op we believe in a better way of doing business, so how we work needs to be at the heart of how we recruit our colleagues, as well as how we manage and develop them,” Victoria Ward, Strategic Resourcing Lead – FLP and Insurance at Co-op, told HR Grapevine.