Hiring the right people can be one of the most challenging aspects of any business. What’s listed on the resume doesn’t always tell the whole story. An applicant who presents as polished, confident, educated and put together, can turn out to be a flop. Whereas a candidate that appears slightly disheveled, shy, inexperienced, and a little bit of a mess, can turn out to be a star employee.

The global pandemic has only intensified the recruitment and hiring process as many companies report adjusting “on the fly” to remote offices and lack of available talent. After two decades of running a small business, I’ll confess, I still make mistakes in the hiring process by always gravitating toward those shiny pennies, most of whom turn out to be a huge disappointment—not to mention cost me a great deal of time and money.

But, in the past several years I’ve changed my strategy by hedging my bets and hiring the candidate I’m most attracted to and least attracted to, just to see which one pans out. Oftentimes it’s the person who didn’t present as well. This exercise has led me to be more conscious of a person’s innate soft skills (personal habits and traits) versus hard skills (degrees, awards, experience) during the interview process.

Since soft skills are difficult to identify on a resume, there are ways you can test candidates throughout the interview process to find those gem employees. Sure, anyone can list soft skills on their resume to impress you, but there’s no way for you to know if they are really a “problem-solver,” “dependable,” “team player,” and so on, until the person starts working for you, and interacting with your team.

While there are many in-demand soft skills out there, I’ve identified three that may be most valuable for your organization in 2023. These are the traits or personal habits that shape how a person works. And while these skills may not be fully developed in an individual, seeing any glimmer of them in a candidate could be an excellent base to work from as you continue to build a more collaborative, loyal and hardworking team.

1. Commitment

Remember when it was considered a good thing to be with one company forever? Today, it feels like if you don’t make a move every five years or so, you are a bit obsolete in your career. A former intern of mine shared with me the reaction of one hiring manager after observing on her resume that she had worked for an established hotel chain for eight consecutive years, “How can you possibly have any diversity of experience by only working for one company?” This particular interviewer didn’t end up hiring my former intern, and what a mistake that was, because she is probably one of the most committed team members who ever worked for me.

Commitment is a subset of a larger soft skill known as work ethic. There are many subset skills of work ethic like responsibility, discipline and dependability. However, identifying a committed person in the interview process may be easier to accomplish. To find traits of commitment, look for longevity on the resume. How long has the candidate worked for various organizations? Ask questions like:

“What was your relationship like with your boss?”

“How did you help your co-workers succeed?”

“Can you share a non-work example of how strong your level of commitment is?”

This last question is particularly helpful for entry-level candidates who may not be able to show that much work experience or level of commitment on a resume. It’s also a revealing question that opens up the dialogue to their personal life, without directly asking inappropriate personal questions. How the candidate responds will tell you a lot about their character and commitment. The person you are interviewing may reveal that they went to a particular public university versus an out-of-state Ivy League school to stay close to home and take care of a family member. Just looking at a person on paper would never give you these types of insights into their level of commitment. In this example, I would hire the public school graduate over the Ivy Leaguer, purely because of the fact that the candidate put another person’s needs above his or her own. You can bet this person will do the same at your company versus dropping you for the next big offer.

2. Verbal Communication

Always on the top of any organization’s wish list for employees is the ability to communicate. This is a soft skill that’s near and dear to my heart since my entire profession in public relations is based on the ability to communicate. However, looking for a good communicator is a fairly broad task. Communication encompasses listening, presentation, and written and verbal skills. While there are many important subsets of communication that an interviewer could zero in on, my recommendation for 2023 is to find candidates with excellent verbal communication skills.

Technology has helped advance us in many ways, but where it has done us a huge disservice is in verbal communication. No longer is anyone required to pick up the phone and call someone. Instead, you could email, text, direct message, “Slack,” and so on. Because of all these options to avoid speaking to someone, most people have significant challenges in verbal communication. Moving to remote offices didn’t help this skill either, as there is not even an opportunity to practice casual “water cooler” chat with co-workers. If you don’t know what a water cooler is, let’s just say your verbal skills may need a bootcamp level workout.

Verbal communication skills are mandatory for any company looking to close deals, expand their network, solve problems or retain employees. It’s the critical communication skill that makes us human, persuasive and approachable. Without good verbal skills, your company is at a disadvantage. The written word, no matter how well written, can only take you so far.

To find good verbal communicators, I’m intentional in my interview process. The candidate’s first interview is on the phone and has no visual component. All I want to hear is how the person presents verbally. I don’t even research candidates in advance to see what they look like to avoid being distracted with any automatic biases. Additionally, I send directions that the candidate must call to start the interview. This reveals other skills like organization, confidence, punctuality and ability to follow directions. Round two of the interview process involves a visual component (either in person or virtual), however to get there candidates must first impress me with their verbal skills. Additionally, asking these questions can give you insights into their level of comfort with verbal communication tools:

“Have you ever had a job where you had to make cold calls?”

“What did you like or dislike about this job?”

“During a crisis, do you text, email or call someone on the phone?”

While these questions may not give you the full picture of someone’s verbal skills, they are a good place to begin the discussion and start to understand a person’s level of comfort with using their voice in everyday work situations, as well as tense ones.

3. Optimism

We often talk about the importance of adaptability, especially in these uncertain times, but perhaps an even deeper quality to look for in an individual is optimism.

Negativity is contagious. The more pessimists you have in your organization, the harder it will be to get meaningful work done while also trying to meet goals and objectives. Adding professionals who have an optimistic view on the world not only increases the productivity of the team, but also your company’s ability to cope with difficult problems. In fact, optimism has been shown to create physical and mental resilience in people, even those who have been through traumatizing situations.

Questions that can help lead you to the “glass is half full” type of candidates include:

“Describe a problem you encountered recently. How did you handle it?”

“How did you spend your year in 2020?”

“What’s holding you back from giving us 100 percent of your attention for this position?”

This last question is what prompted one young woman to confess to me her “situation.” She boldly told me that she would give 100 percent of her attention to the position even though she had a new baby and was a single mom. She detailed the childcare coverage she had arranged and how the success of her career was critically important to her, as she had a lot of people she needed to prove wrong about becoming a single mom in college. I didn’t show it on my face, but my head was exploding with the shock that she would give me all of this personal information voluntarily. Most employers would have dumped her resume and gone with someone who had a little “less on their plate” to conquer. But there was something in her determined answer that demonstrated great optimism in her situation. I hired her and she proved to be one of my best employees ever.

If you change one thing in your hiring practices this year, try focusing on these, or any soft skills, that are important to the growth of your organization. Time and time again, the most loyal, productive, hard-working employees prove to be the ones that don’t present best on paper. NIE

Amy Summers launched Pitch Publicity in 2003, and is credited as the first to strategize live media interviews at both the deepest and highest points of the planet. In 2020, she launched INICIVOX to help individuals improve a wide-range of soft skills centered on the complexity of communications. Her microcast, “The Pitch with Amy Summers,” is one of the most highly rated flash briefings on Amazon’s Alexa. Summers earned her Bachelor of Science degree in public relations with a minor in health science education from the University of Florida and currently serves as board member and founding partner of Naturally New York. Learn more at: www.pitchpublicitynyc.com and www.INICIVOX.com.