MUST-ASK SOFT SKILL QUESTIONS BEFORE HIRING NEW EMPLOYEES

9 min readJul 20, 2021

Soft Skills Get Little Respect, But Will Make Or Break Your Career.

Peggy Klaus

Soft skills are essential! From recruitment to teamwork, collaboration, communication, and decision-making, soft skills remain an integral part of an employee’s journey throughout. Hence, helping new employees fit into the company culture appropriately and ensure maximum productivity.

Soft skills cannot get quantified. So, it becomes a little more challenging to go for a screening of these skills. And that is the reason employers must make sure to ask a few soft skills questions to recognize the employee’s understanding, thinking ability, persona, and motivation towards the job role specified.

There is nothing right or wrong in a soft skill-based question as it ultimately depends upon the individual answering them.

So, in this article, we have gathered some soft skills assessment questions with different categories to help you identify and hire the best candidates for your organization. Let’s get started.

COMMUNICATION-BASED QUESTIONS

The communication skills assessment helps evaluate the candidate’s ability and approach towards a particular task by implementing professional communication etiquette.

So, here is a list of communication soft skills questions that you must ask the candidates before recruiting them for your organization.

1. Tell me something about yourself.
2. How can you explain to a layman about the job role offered to you?
3. Explain the characteristics of this object and try selling this to the panel.
4. How would you handle the situation if you identify your colleague suppressing your achievements at the workplace?
5. What is your preferred mode of communication: Written or verbal?
6. Good listener or communication: What is your pick and why?

TEAMWORK RELATED QUESTIONS

The employees you will be recruiting will have to work in a team either remotely or at the workplace. Hence, it is necessary to evaluate and check if the candidates are willing to work in a team or believe in solo efforts to accomplish a task.

1. Do you think team events are necessary at the workplace?
2. What steps would you take to bring the entire team back on track if they are not remaining productive?
3. Imagine if a task gets assigned to your team. And all of the members carry a different approach towards resolving the issue. How do you make all of them work together?
4. How can you define team spirit?
5. How would you motivate your team members to put their 100% effort into accomplishing their tasks on time?

LEADERSHIP QUALITY EVALUATION QUESTIONS

Excellent leaders bring out the best in the people around them!

So, with the following questions, you can check if the candidate possesses the characteristics of a good leader who can take his team along and achieve the set goals.

1. What would you do if you find out your manager is making a mistake?
2. If you find a pattern of your team members quitting the project one by one. What would be your take on this?
3. How do you divide the workload within a team?
4. What are your expectations from your manager?
5. If your organization is undergoing financial problems, how would you decide on the list of employees to fire?

FLEXIBILITY CHECK ASSESSMENT

The workplace flexibility test helps you count on the candidates who can adapt to any changing location or need without any difficulty. The one who scores good points on this test is more likely to get comfortable in demanding situations and work efficiently.

1. Do you find adapting to new changes difficult? Does it affect your productivity and efficiency?
2. If there is any surprise task assigned to you, would you take it positively or find it challenging?
3. Are you comfortable rearranging your schedule?
4. Can you deal with short-notice and urgent tasks?
5. Do you like working in a routine?

PROBLEM SOLVING ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS

Choosing a candidate who is good at problem-solving can prove to be a hit for your organization. An efficient problem-solver has a well-organized and reasonable approach towards any raised issue. Hence, by taking this assessment, you can know about the modern approaches of an aspirant for solving a problem.

1. What are some common attributes for successfully solving a problem?
2. Specify the time when you used to have to be creative or productive in resolving a problem?
3. What is the right time to analyze information for addressing a problem successfully?
4. Do you have a time when you identified a problem and resolved it at the earliest?
5. Label the time when you ought to resolve a problem in an emergency?

CREATIVITY-BASED QUESTIONS

The creativity assessment is for understanding the abilities of a candidate to approach an assignment creatively. It tests the mental capacity of an aspirant who can stand out from others.

1. What do you label the book if it describes your life?
2. How will you express your views at meetings to fuel your creativity?
3. State an example of a business being inventive and creative to become successful?
4. How can you encourage creativity and innovation at your workplace?

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS ASSESSMENT

Interpersonal skills can help you understand the capability of a candidate to maintain successful relationships with their coworkers. With this assessment, you can recognize if the candidate can socialize with others comfortably or not.

1. State some of the key elements to build a healthy relationship with your coworkers?
2. How to handle a conflict with a coworker?
3. How do you deliver unpopular information?
4. Do you ever face a situation when you organized a healthy relationship with someone you didn’t like earlier?

TIME MANAGEMENT CHECK QUESTIONS

With the time management, soft skills test, you can check if the candidate can make the best use of the office hours and remains productive throughout.

Not just in the traditional workplace, the employees have to be productive while working remotely as well. Hence, this assessment can check if the candidate has a well-defined approach to plan, prioritize and execute their thoughts on the projects assigned.

1. How well do you multitask?
2. What is the one that describes you: ‘done is better than perfect or ‘everything has to look perfect?
3. How do you prioritize conflicting deadlines?
4. What will be your approach when you struggle to meet a deadline? What will you do?
5. If you get assigned with something big right immediately to the end of your day. What would be your reply?

DECISION MAKING ABILITY TEST

Decision-making ability can check if the candidate possesses the characteristics of a good leader. It includes making the right decision in the right situations to make everything fall into place and let the work operate smoothly.

1. How do you deal with it, when you have to decide something under pressure?
2. Would you like to take the power of decision-making and responsibility, or would you prefer to hand it over to someone else?
3. What is the most difficult decision you have had to make on the job?
4. How to deal with the wrong decision you have made by mistake?
5. What are the most challenging decisions to make?

EMPMONITOR- THE BEST EMPLOYEE MONITORING SOFTWARE

Now that you have the best set of questions to evaluate the candidate’s soft skills, we are sure you can find the perfect match for your organization who are productive, efficient, and have a positive approach towards their job.

Also, when you have such potential employees, the entire workplace has a competitive vibe as every employee will wish to stand out.

But how can you pick out the best from them? How do you analyze who has a good command over their soft skills and can manage an entire team in a better way?

Well, for that, you will need an employee monitoring software that provides you with every detail of your employee activity. And the best employee management tool with all the extraordinary features and an intuitive dashboard is EmpMonitor.

EmpMonitor is a reliable employee monitoring, managing, and tracking software that works wonderfully in the stealth mode, behind the computer screens of the employee’s workstation, and provides a detailed report of all the activities performed by the employee throughout the working hours.

Productivity Report: EmpMonitor shares a detailed productivity report. Here you can check the productive and unproductive activities of an employee throughout office hours. So, if you find any employee remaining unproductive for a certain period, you can take the necessary actions.

Screenshot Monitoring: The tool captures screenshots at random intervals and shares a report. Here you can find the screenshot of the employee’s screen during the working hours and check on which task they were working.

Website And Application Usage Monitoring: It also shares the insights of the website and applications visited or used by the employee while working. Hence, you can also mark the sites as productive and unproductive and keep a check on your employees.

Keystroke Logging: The keystroke logging feature of EmpMonitor is pretty interesting. You can get your hands on all the details about the keypunches of your employee’s workstation.

Attendance Monitoring: You do not require an attendance monitoring tool separately if you have EmpMonitor. It accurately marks the clock in and clocks out the time of the employees.

Cloud-Based Storage: EmpMonitor has cloud-based storage and keeps the data safe for about 180 days.

Apart from all these, EmpMonitor has a flexible and reasonable pricing plan. And the fun part is it also offers a 15-days free trial. So, grab your free trial session now, and do not miss out on this opportunity.

Check Out Our Latest Posts:
Workplace Harassment: Types And Recognition
The Best Practices To Set Productivity Benchmarks For Your Company
New To The Corporate World? Learn These Imperative Approaches To Behave Rightly

OVER TO YOU

Screening candidates based on both soft skills and technical skills go hand in hand. Though there is no correct answer to a soft skill question, adding a few of the above-mentioned questions can help you analyze the best fit for your organization.

I hope the article helped you know more about soft skills. Is there something that we can incorporate? Please drop your thoughts in the comments below. I would love to hear from you!