Soft Skills – A Global Movement
A global movement headed up by prestigious companies, sees employers seeking soft skills over qualifications when hiring. Soft skills have been a hot topic for HR Managers of late, with interesting research indicating that academic success is not always correlated to how well new hires perform on the job, including an Ernst & Young 18-month study of 400 employees.
Some of the most notable companies participating in the movement as well as Ernst & Young are; global publishing group Penguin Random House, and accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
There is no denying that a formal qualification serves as an important foundation for learning and skills however HR Managers are having to re-evaluate the criteria for many job descriptions, after taking recent soft skill  findings into consideration.
New Age Skills
This adjustment to what constitutes a desirable candidate is particularly relevant, as employment is increasingly redefined by technology and new skills.
Hiring managers in the technology, science, design and innovation industries will be most aware of this shift, especially when recruiting roles in sales, marketing, customer service, management, and operations.
Some of the desirable soft skills hiring managers are looking for in potential employees are; resilience, self-motivation, leadership, creativity and problem solving.
New Zealand getting on board
In New Zealand companies are currently in a unique position when hiring, faced with one of the highest levels of unfilled job vacancies in its history, and unemployment rates falling to 4.8% (second quarter of 2017).
This increased priority of soft-skills has come at an opportune time for NZ employers while they are faced with fewer skilled and tertiary qualified candidates however determining a  candidate’s soft skills isn’t always as easy as checking for their education and qualifications.
Today hiring managers can more easily identify those skill based competencies by harnessing the power of data, helping remove risk from the hiring decision.
Predicative psychometric assessments use scientifically proven data to predict a candidate’s future performance and competencies, helping hiring managers identify these soft skills alongside any other relevant experience from their CV.
To find out more about CVCheck’s predictive psychometric assessments get in touch with our team below.
