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Spotting Resilience in Candidates When Hiring

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Looking for hard and soft skills when hiring is important. This includes seeking resilience in the best talent.

The increasing complexity of work environments requires employees to adapt quickly. They must effectively handle stressful situations to continue to move forward.

Uncovering resilience in candidates involves knowing what to look for during interviews. This helps clarify whether candidates have what it takes to be successful with your organization.

Implement these tips to find resilience in candidates during interviews.

Know What You Are Looking For

The ability to handle uncertainty plays a significant role in resilience. Resilient candidates can strategically prioritize, overcome obstacles, and continue to work toward their goals.

A candidate’s resume likely will not provide much insight into their level of resilience. However, investing a substantial amount of time with one company and receiving multiple promotions implies the candidate worked through issues and was rewarded appropriately.

Tailor Your Expectations for Resilience to the Role

Each position has unique challenges that require employees to be resilient. This impacts what you should expect from candidates during interviews.

For instance, decision-making and leadership roles require more resilience than entry-level positions. This is why your expectations need to be adjusted appropriately.

Ask Relevant Questions

The modern workplace is filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. As a result, you must use interviews to assess how candidates may react to challenges in the workplace.

Ask questions to determine how a candidate’s emotions are triggered and how they react to stressful situations. These questions may involve recent frustrations or failures candidates experienced and how the candidates responded.

For instance, you might request an example of when a candidate last got angry at work, what they were angry about, and how they responded. Look for an authentic answer to assess their resilience during challenging times.

Evaluate Authenticity in Interview Answers

Determine the candidate’s work in previous positions and what they took responsibility for. This includes whether they worked independently or collaborated.

Ask follow-up questions about each candidate’s work experience to uncover details about their accomplishments. You need to know how dedicated they were to resolving issues and the type of value they can to your organization.

Set Up a Role Play

Describe a workplace challenge relevant to the position, then ask each candidate how they would respond to it. Ask them to detail the different aspects they would consider, and they would approach the situation.

Role-playing lets you assess how each candidate would work through a real-life stressful situation. It also provides insight into their resilient nature.

Take notes on how each candidate evaluates, works through, and reacts to the situation. This helps determine how resilient they would be in the role.

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5 Soft Skills Essential for a Successful IT Career

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The IT industry wants technical skills and in-demand certifications. What candidates often forget, however, is the bonus presented by soft skills. 

Soft skills previously took a back seat to your professional expertise, especially if you offered a particularly hard-to-find qualification. Today, they’re not the core skills that get you hired. 

What are the most useful soft skills for a successful IT career? Here’s what RightStone’s top clients look for in a new hire. 

Communication 

We still think of IT roles as being highly technical. Part of your ability to do the job depends on your ability to communicate. From emails to proposals to leadership, your ability to communicate project parameters is at the heart of your success. 

Collaboration 

Twenty years ago, the right lone wolf developer could have the pick of any job. Today, employers look for developers who have both technical and collaboration skills. 

Being able to work with others is a core skill, particularly when you work remotely. Remote working requires you to work cohesively and allow room for creative thinking from all team members. 

If you can collaborate, you can get your product to market faster — and that’s what employers look for. 

Creativity 

Although learning in IT can be rote, you have the freedom to run once you get beyond the basics. Here, creativity can flourish, and employers look for creative problem-solving skills. After all, it’s not just your ability to create solutions that matter. You need to solve problems in a way that makes the most sense for your unique end users. 

Negotiation 

Your negotiation skills is a soft skill that not only helps you move up the career ladder but have practical day-to-day uses. You can negotiate with clients to coax them into solutions that make the most sense for their business. You can also negotiate with team members to help them make a deadline. 

And of course, you can negotiate your salary, project budget, and duties to help you win the job you want. Employers see your negotiation skills from the beginning, so don’t be afraid to show them off. 

Empathy 

Empathy is a skill that you need in any position if you want to work for, with, or in service of other people. Empathy not only allows you to work more closely with a team, but it can be your superpower by enabling you to take responsibility for yourself and your work. 

If you have empathy, more people want to work with you. 

Do You Have the Soft Skills Employers Want? 

Employers want to know about your experience, portfolio, and certifications. However, an impressive resume isn’t the only thing you need in a competitive job market. You also need the soft skills that employers want. 

After all, technical skills get a project started, but skills collaboration, communication, and empathy get the job done. 

Do you have what employers are looking for? Let us know. Click here to view RightStone’s jobs board. 

5 Marketable Skills Every IT Professional Should Have

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You already know your skills and experience are crucial to finding a job. Often IT positions will require very specific certifications, education or project experience and only the candidates who have them will go on to interview and compete for the position. So, if every applicant has roughly the same abilities, how can you set yourself apart as the right pick for the job? Here are some additional skills to develop and display so you get noticed.

  1. Good Communication:

    Lots of IT professionals spend their days heads down at their desk, working on projects. One of the best skills you can have – and showcase in your resume, cover letter, and interview – is good communication. This shows you can share your ideas intelligently and will likely work well in teams and across departments.

  2. Creativity:

    You don’t have to be an artist, but employers often want someone with a sense of creativity, because these candidates are often the best at innovation, problem-solving and innovation.

  3. Commitment to Learning:

    Technology is constantly changing and it’s never enough to just get a degree or a certificate and be done. Showing you’re involved in or have completed continuing education courses can be a way to share with employers your love of learning and desire to stay ahead of the trends.

  4. Flexibility:

    The only thing constant is change and companies want to know how well you roll with deviations from the plan. This is especially important in IT, where the plan can change quickly due to problems with deployment or having to troubleshoot an unanticipated issue. Flexibility can be demonstrated by sharing your experience in various projects or talking about your time spent at a startup or other business where the day to day was anything but ordinary.

  5. Organized:

    Everyone needs a system. Employers look for candidates who are organized because they know they can follow the system and processes in place, or even help develop more efficient ones. Organization is a key ingredient to job success, as it’s often the driving force behind meeting deadlines, tracking projects, and effectively testing and implementing solutions.

Work With Us!

We can help match your marketable skills to the right employer. Let us help you find the employer that will appreciate your skills and enable you to do your best work. Contact us today to find your next role.