How interviewers identify Soft skills?

You have all technical & job skills required for the job. You did well in the interview. You are able to asnwer all the questions in the paper test. However the feedback you received from employer / recruiter is that you are not fit / suitable for the environment.

What happened? Your soft skills showed you aren’t the right person. If you carefully review any job advert, notice that the last few requirements are behavioural requirements. Majority job seekers focus only on the first few requirements & ignore the last part of it.

These are the few that are commonly seen in job advertisement

• Excellent communication skills and ability to successfully interact with people at all levels.


• Able to work independently and at various levels of abstraction


• Strong analytical, coordination skill, ability to work independently and drive for result


• Strong leadership with the ability to interact well with all level of people.


• Demonstrates strategic thinking, detailed execution and have high team enthusiasm.

The traits that you can pull out would be "Energetic, Independent, Able to work in a team, Aggresive, Motivated, Good analytical skills, Sense of responsibility, Time Management."

Now how does the interviewer access these traits in any interview? There isn't / not frequent to come across questions which specifically ask you to to tell the person you are. Eg 1) Are you someone who is able to work independently? If there is such questions asked, everyone will be asnwering "yes". But "yes" is not sufficient. You need to elaborate with good examples to support your statement.

Interviewers access the personality traits when they ask questions eg

a) How will you handle a situation that requires you to do a number of things at the same time? (Independent, Aggresive, Time Management)

b) Tell me about a time when you worked effectively under pressure. (Energy, Motivation, Time Management)

c) Tell me an example of how you solve a difficult SMT problem. (Analytical skills, Team work)

Therefore show your consistency when asnwering such questions. Be the person you are. Most importantly support your asnwer with examples.

You can start by listing the personality traits & going through one by one by recalling examples of projects that you lead or participated rather than going through hundreds of possible interview questions.

Knowing the objective of why the questions is being asked will eventually help you to understand what is important for the job.

Having the right qualifications & experience is not enough in the current employment world. Having the right attitude coupled with right qualification & experience will take the person further.