Understanding the importance of soft skills when recruiting offshore talent
Key takeaways:
- Soft skills are a mix of communication and listening skills, social and emotional intelligence, and personality traits that allow an individual to thrive in a workplace environment.
- Hiring managers should consider soft skills as much as technical skills when looking for successful candidates.
- Non-technical skills that are important for new hires to have include a good attitude, teamwork-mentality, proper communication, empathy, good work ethic, and problem-solving abilities.
- Creative and critical thinkers have fresh ideas that can improve the workflow of projects.
- Good communication skills within a team will ensure that tasks are completed on time.
- Great work ethic, time management, and collaboration skills are valuable soft skills.
The advent of globalization has offered several benefits and opportunities for businesses around the world. Organizations can now offshore their tasks to other parts of the globe and enjoy lowered operating costs.
Yet, some hiring managers are unable to tap into the global pool of talent that surrounds them. So persistent is this issue that a Hiring for Attitude study found that 46% of new hires fail within 18 months. When it comes to recruiting offshore talent, soft skills can be just as important as tech skills.
We talk about why hiring employees with the right soft skills is essential and how Doxa7 can make sure your team has what it takes to succeed.
What are soft skills?
Businesses today need the right combination of technical talent and soft skills to survive in the global environment. Soft skills are a mix of positive personality traits, communication and listening skills, a good attitude, a collaboration mentality, and emotional intelligence that allows employees to work together effectively. For customer-facing companies, soft skills are a must to deal with the public. Teams working internally also need employees with soft skills to facilitate collaboration and flexibility.
Employees with an adequate set of soft skills help businesses thrive by promoting problem-solving, teamwork, empathy, and perseverance. Why can soft skills be just as important as tech skills? We’ll list five reasons of many.
Why offshore talent needs soft skills
Organizations that employ strategic hiring strategies see great success in today’s business world. Most companies now want employees with certain soft skills even if they work in a technical field such as engineering or IT. These are some of the benefits that businesses receive when they include soft skills in their core recruitment requirements:
1. Fresh ideas from creative thinkers
If you work in a creative industry, you need a steady injection of new, fresh ideas How better to achieve this than with a team of creative, critical thinkers? When recruiting offshore talent, you need to consider if your potential hires can come up with new ideas that will push your projects forward. Creativity and critical thinking in the workplace also help complement automated business processes.
While job descriptions have definite roles and responsibilities, the current business environment requires organizations to come up with new ways of doing things. That said, it can be difficult to find individuals who have the right amount of creativity if you do not have the right hiring strategies.
2. Prompt communication expedites projects
One of the most important soft skills needed when seeking offshore talent is the ability to communicate promptly and efficiently. Offshore workers are often hundreds to thousands of miles away but you can now communicate in real-time thanks to technology. Teams with good communication channels benefit from fast turnaround times, enhanced cooperation, and the expression of creative ideas.
It can be challenging to find talent that guarantees prompt communication. After all, your recruits should not only have the right correspondence skills but also fluency in English and access to collaboration platforms with functioning Internet.
3. A teamwork mentality and a good work ethic improves performance
With many work projects being collaborative, your staff needs to have great teamwork skills. Gone are the days when a manager stood over one’s shoulder to monitor and coordinate the activities of their employees. In a world where people collaborate from different continents, you need a talented group with good teamwork skills.
Employees with great work ethics will also net you stellar performance. You may have technically talented workers but projects are likely to be sub-par if they have poor work ethic.
4. Good leadership qualities help in problem-solving
Good leadership is a necessary ingredient for a business’s success. All work teams, including offshore teams, flourish when their leader is compassionate and driven. Good leaders care about their teams and this not only leads to better communication among team members but also enhances interpersonal relations.
Your offshore team may be highly technically talented but they will find it hard to conduct prosperous business if there are no leadership skills. These soft skills help to resolve workplace disputes and create cohesion among employees.
5. Time management is key
Even the best employee in the world cannot effectively produce if they do not respect deadlines. Time management involves exercising conscious control over the time one spends working and increases the efficiency of both individuals and a team. An employee with poor time management is likely to slow down the efforts of the entire team.
Offshore hiring managers should make sure candidates display time management skills. They should be asked about meeting deadlines and give examples from previous jobs.
Let DOXA handle your offshore recruitment
Recruiting offshore talent takes skills and dedication. With such a large pool of talent around the world, it can be difficult to find the right team of people that you can trust to push your company forward. Finding the perfect blend of soft and technical skills requires expertise and investment.
At DOXA, we help you find the right talent for the role you need when you need it. This includes conducting panel interviews for pre-assessments and using assessments to understand what candidates excel at and can sustain for longer periods. We then bring you the top two to three candidates for you to make your final decision.
Contact us today for a free consultation on the benefits of utilizing offshore talent.
