SM Advisors provides assessments that measure such things as an individual’s behavioral style, motivators, intelligence, and soft skills. You could say soft skills are our ability to get things done. Some examples of soft skills include:
- Self-management
- Leading others
- Planning and organization skills
- Problem-solving
- Personal accountability
- Holding others accountable
- Attention to detail
- Teamwork
Don’t you agree that you would really like to know these things before you hire someone? From experience, I have seen that having the right soft skills for a position is usually the difference between an average employee and a top performer. During the hiring process, it is easier to measure a candidate’s hard skills which are the individual’s ability to do accounting or operations. However, soft skills are only measurable through behavioral science. That’s where the assessments come in.
I want to stress that I am not talking about personality here. It isn’t possible to measure an individual’s total personality. We are all too complex to measure that, but we can measure actual behaviors, motivators and soft skills to help us better understand whether the candidate will be a top performer for the specific position you are looking to fill.
For example, if you’re looking for a manager who has several direct reports, a top performer in that position would have the soft skill of holding people accountable. This would be clearly identified in the job benchmark. Lack of accountability is one of the greatest weaknesses for many organizations and is a key reason why the company does not perform at a higher level.
We all have come to believe in the other sciences to cure our ailments and solve our energy problems. With accuracy approaching 90%, it is time to believe that behavioral science is here to stay and should be part of helping you hire the right person the first time.
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