Here's how to rock at soft skills during an interview

Back in November, we put together common technological skill questions that Senior developers can use?to get ahead of their job interviews . We did so because most hiring managers focus on technical skills and engineering experience during the recruiting process.

Yet, Fortune 500 companies and staff augmentation firms such as ours have long identified a strong array of soft skills that are just as crucial for business optimization. Here are three of the most important ones.

We’re not just naming the soft skills for you; we’ve also included ways at the bottom in which you can display your strength in these areas during a recruitment process.

Number one: Effective communication

Think how crucial it is for a developer to communicate effectively with a project manager and scrum master, for example. Doing so can easily avoid cost overruns and missed deadlines.?The same applies to communications with end users and the many other stakeholders having a direct or indirect impact in our development tasks.

Knowing that a framework such as Agile development has simply taken over lots of the IT world, we need to recognize that our methodologies call for effective team communication.

Therefore, professional, courteous, but also punctual communication is key. Especially throughout a recruiting process, this skill can help to interview managers identify valuable abilities in this area.

Mastering this precise skill becomes even more important in a fully remote work scenario.

Number two: Accepting Constructive Criticism

Tied to the above, working — and thriving — in Big Tech calls for team members who can give and receive constructive criticism.

Let’s go back to Agile software development for a second. The methodology is defined by its use of software iterations – barebone versions of the final product used to solicit feedback from end users and stakeholders. This structure depends upon team players who can understand end-user pain points, their frustrations, and unique messaging characteristics and channels to clearly grasp and articulate their role.

As professionals in this position, we simply need to be capable of receiving a lot of criticism to function properly in what we need to achieve. In that sense, feedback upon which we can build to improve our work should be something we look forward to, not something by which we’re repeatedly challenged or due to which we necessarily feel personally attacked.

Mid-level developers who are receptive in this area can also enhance their marketability to more senior positions, by the way.?

Number three: Being Calm Under Pressure

Here’s perhaps one of the most difficult soft skills to manage as a developer in the tech industry. When faced with anxiety and stress, which can commonly arise in our fields, our bodies release chemicals. Those, such as adrenaline and cortisol, lead to emotional reactions.

On top of that, mentally and emotionally-challenging situations can cause a flight or fight response, which immediately leads to poor decision-making and regrettable outbursts.

Hiring managers will often say most candidates are extremely nervous during their interviews. They commonly show agitation, fidgeting, a trembling voice, and even an inability to articulate.

Being able to remain calm under pressure is thus a true asset in this field. Display command thereof during your interview and skills test, and you can easily rise amongst other candidates in an interview process.

Also, your patience and willingness to gather your thoughts before responding can help display confidence and emotional intelligence.?

Now, how do we excel at these soft skills during the hiring process?

Let’s get to our last set of advice before we call this a day:

-???????Carefully read any material sent your way. Also proofread your emails as you send out replies, aiming to be crystal clear in your email communications. There’s not much else to this area than to pay close attention to what you’re using as your communication mechanisms; the word choice, response times, and strategies you use to convey your ideas.

-???????Be open and responsive to recruiters. When called over the phone, for example, or if contacted via instant messaging or any other channel, be mindful of your reception and responses. Don’t let a quick reply take you away from the best response possible for an excellent comeback to whatever is being asked of you in the process. This could be your next employer with whom you’re speaking.

-???????Give specific examples of your skills. To emphasize professional communication skills during an interview, cite past projects where effective communication has been crucial to your success. Mention your regular sit-downs with project managers and other stakeholders. If you have any, specify concrete details that have helped you save money and time during previous projects.?Great communication as a team can be a cornerstone to building an app that more accurately met end-user needs, for instance.

-???????Be honest about your shortcomings. There’s no such thing as the perfect human being, let alone the ideal individual who surpasses everyone’s goals and expectations in the field of IT. What we have are diverse skill sets and learning curves, a career, perhaps desired growth, and our abilities and inabilities to adapt to diverse scenarios. Disclose your compositions naturally. We all have strengths and weaknesses and knowing what our shortcomings are and being able to communicate them is part of dominating valuable soft skills that go a long way.

-???????Take a deep breath to conceptualize presented problems and break answers down into manageable steps. You can easily display just how calm you are under pressure during a panel interview process by using breathing and mind-clearing techniques that help you be more precise in what you present.

A final example before we go

One of our candidates recently talked about her previous inability to delegate work. Early in her career, she was reluctant to doing so, claiming she was the only person who could be trusted to complete items right.

She also spoke passionately about a night leadership course that changed her perspective, however. It was through that experience that she understood how her failure to delegate was more tied to her fear of losing control than to her colleagues’ actual capabilities.

She thus shared with our panel how that course allowed her to change her work style. She was able to articulate exactly how delegation helped her team beat deadlines, develop a sense of cohesion, and gain trust.

If there’s anything to learn here is that expressing how constructive criticism has helped us along the way in our development paths can be a valuable way to portray where we stand in our multiple soft skills, especially in this market.

We hope the same comes easily for you as you make more conscious efforts to improve your soft skills and your presentation of them for your next interview.

Care to give our job openings a try, by any chance? Check out our open positions while you’re here.