The top 5 soft skills you need for your interview

While your resume’s job is to detail your hard skills—the measurable results you can share from previous roles—the interview experience is meant to help you demonstrate the soft skills you’ve learned throughout your career. Not sure which ones are most important to detail in an interview? Check out our list below: 

1 - Communication

The top soft skill on nearly every list will typically be communication. Without communication skills, you likely won’t be able to ace your interview or do well in your job. Communication is critical in the workplace—it helps you build better relationships with your coworkers, find solutions to problems, and express your point of view in a clear way. Communication is also an important part of taking and implementing feedback, understanding client and coworker challenges, and reading the room when verbal communication isn’t always possible or clear. 

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The communication skills you will need in an interview setting could range from

• Active listening—understanding and responding to questions
• Verbal communication—giving clear answers
• Written communication—connecting with the recruiter or hiring manager via email
• Presentation skills—showcasing your past or most recent work
• Nonverbal communication skills—expressing interest in the job without explicitly saying so 

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Need to practice your communication skills for your interview? Grab a friend or a colleague and ask them to help you prepare for your interview. Use mock questions and ask for real feedback so you can improve. Check out our article: top 19 behavioral interview questions if you need a place to start. 

2 - Teamwork

Most companies aren’t looking for an all-star to do all of the work in the interview process. Instead, they’re searching for someone who can join the team and add synergy to the work that’s already happening at that organization. Because of this, the second most critical soft skill you’ll need to interview is teamwork. 

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The teamwork skills you will need to prove you have in an interview setting could range from:

• Accountability—showing how you can take on tasks and complete them
• Collaboration—demonstrating that you can work with coworkers both on and off your team
• Conflict resolution—detailing how you handle any challenges that come up as you work as a team 

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Need ideas on how to prove you’re a team player? Gather some of your past stories that detail your part in a previous team’s accomplishment. Share these stories organically in the interview.

3 - Creativity 

It can be difficult for employers to outline all of the exact skills they need from a new hire, but most are looking for someone who can not only work with a team and communicate clearly, but also think outside of the box. Challenges in the workplace are commonplace and thinking on your feet to fix those problems is something all employers want in a new hire. To prove that you can do this in the new role, you’ll need to detail the ways that you’re creative in the interview. 

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The creativity skills you will need to showcase in an interview could include:

• Imagination—showing how you come up with new ideas
• Curiosity—detailing how you want to learn more
• Experimentation—explaining how you have tried new ideas and failed or succeeded

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Need a way to boost your creativity skills? Try learning about new brainstorming strategies, getting curious and asking questions about your industry or the way your peers do their work, and expanding your knowledge by reading industry blogs, books, and interviews with subject matter experts.

4 - Adaptability 

It’s no surprise that the job you’re hired to do often shifts while you’re employed. Change is the only constant in the workplace and employers are looking for new hires that are adaptable and flexible. And while this skill can often be showcased when you talk about how much of a team player you are, explaining your adaptability beyond working on a team can go a long way in helping you land the job. 

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The adaptability skills you’ll need to prove you have in an interview could include: 

• Resilience—showing that you can withstand hard things that happen at work or at home)
• Embracing change—understanding that things change on the job and you will need to shift with each change 
• Multitasking—adding new work tasks to your list even when they aren’t part of your job description
• Learning new skills—growing outside of the skillset you came into the job with

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Need ideas on how to be more adaptable? Be open to new experiences—ask for work outside of your typical day-to-day tasks, job shadow someone in another department, take a mentor or a colleague out to lunch and get their feedback, and ask for feedback in your current role about how you can be more flexible. 

5 - Time Management 

Just like most things in life, work runs on deadlines—and employers aren’t interested in hiring people that can’t stick to a calendar. Because of this, time management skills are a critical soft skill that you’ll need to both show during your interview and detail in your answers. An easy way to showcase that you have this soft skill is to show up on time to your interview. If you’re late or you’re frazzled when you get there (whether it’s in person or over Zoom), the way you present yourself will speak louder than any other story you may share about your time management skills.

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The time management skills you’ll need to showcase during an interview could include: 

• Prioritization—identifying the ways you prioritize the most important work
• Delegation—outlining how you like to delegate tasks if you are leading a team
• Goal setting—detailing how you like to set goals and your process for reaching specific milestones 
• Stress management—proving that you can handle a large list of work and not buckle under the pressure

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Need better time management skills? Give time blocking a try. Set aside a specific set of time to work on a specific task and then get to work. By dividing your time into smaller blocks of time you can focus better on the task at hand. A great example? Build in time to check your email or Slack updates vs. constantly checking to see if a new message has come in that needs your attention. 

Need more resources? Check out these links:

8 steps on how to accept a job offer

How to study for an interview in 8 steps

6 best practices to help you secure a job offer

4 ways to ask for more money on a job offer

How long does it take to hear back after an interview

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