When you’re constantly interviewing candidates and welcoming new people to your company, you may think you know everything to look out for. But just as quickly as technology and lifestyles change, so do people’s skills and qualifications, and it’s important to keep on top of them.
What was once the best qualification for your business’s needs may have been overshadowed by other, more modern and advanced training schemes. Those personality skills that were once viewed as key may not be as significant as a different soft skill that could bring a different dynamic to the business.
Let’s look at five key skills that are shining through when it comes to seeking out the best employees. If an employee can show all the below, backed up with examples, you’re onto hiring a winning candidate.
Managing ambiguity
At one point, HR teams looked for teamwork, communication and leadership as top personal skills. While these are still key, the ability to manage ambiguity is now an important one that recruiters should be looking for. It’s a less obvious one, but this skill is an essential one if you are looking for someone who can progress into management roles.
In a nutshell, managing ambiguity involves making decisions based on what information someone else has given, even if it is little or poor information. This comes with risk and uncertainty because the information tends to come from other people or untrusted sources. If someone can give examples how they handle this by can taking what they are given and using it to make the best decision, it is an invaluable skill.
Look out for this in particular if you are recruiting for the retail or hospitality industries.
Entrepreneurial skills
No matter what business area you are recruiting for, an ideal candidate will show various signs of entrepreneurial skills. If someone can successfully suggest ways to improve processes, discuss any gaps or spaces for opportunity in the market, or bring new ideas to the table in interview stage, it means they have an entrepreneurial approach.
It’s usually present with those who have studied business degrees at higher education, like MBAs, which train students about all areas of business in depth. From financial forecasting to curating marketing strategies, those fresh from an MBA qualification should be able to show their entrepreneurial skills, which are highly valuable to a business of any shape and size.
Look for candidates who have this qualification background and ask them about their studies during the interview. They may have studied online and worked it around their current or previous job, like this Suffolk course at https://online.suffolk.edu/programs/mba, which educates students to become skilled within real-life business.
Problem solving abilities
Every successful business tends to have a member of staff – or a group of staff members – who can problem solve, quickly and efficiently. During the interview stage, it’s worth asking a few competencies based questions that present a potential problem to the interviewee, and see how they take the information and turn it into a solution.
Things to look out for when assessing someone’s ability to problem solve is how they use creativity. Most people who are brilliant problem solvers tend to be creative, allowing them to look at problems in a whole different way, either intuitively or methodically.
An effective problem solver should also show signs of being a strong researcher, which is again an excellent skill to have. You could test both their creative and research-based problem solving skills by proposing two different scenarios and asking how they would approach them. Make sure one shows how they use their creativity, and the other how they approach researching.
Resilience
If a potential employee understands how to professionally cope with change, stress and problems, chances are they have resilience. Today’s fast paced industries means that work place situations can change rapidly, and not always for the best. It’s how an employee handles this and sets an example to other employees that makes them a key, resilient member of the company.
Ideally, a strong candidate will react quickly to change, accepting any modifications and communicating professionally where needed.
Analytical skills
Most companies are led by profit and growth, therefore anyone who processes strong analytical skills will be highly valuable for your business.
It’s not just the basics of analytics to look out for, it’s how they can work with different types of information, explore patterns and trends, and draw up meaningful conclusions from data.
Speed is also crucial in certain companies, so if you are recruiting for a position that highly depends on analytical skills, don’t be afraid to run a timed test. This will give you a realistic idea of how well someone can analyse figures and take them into certain situations, and to what timescales they can work to.
As businesses must quickly react to the changes in technology and media, it’s worth keeping your eye out for creative and social media skills too. If someone can come into your company who has an eye for digital trends, the importance of social media, and online marketing, they could be key as the business grows.
It’s all about drawing up a set of suitable skills relevant to not just the available role, but also the company as it continues to grow. Staff with varied skills that can stretch into other areas as the company grows are irreplaceable.