How to assess soft skills in interviews

Hiring decisions often come down to more than technical ability. Two candidates with similar experience can perform very differently once they join your business, and the difference is usually down to soft skills. How someone communicates, handles pressure, works with others and adapts to change shapes their long-term success in the role.

As a recruitment agency, we work with employers across tech, digital, data and marketing who consistently tell us that soft skills are some of the hardest things to assess in an interview. They are also some of the most important.

In this blog, we explain what soft skills are, why they matter so much in hiring, which skills to focus on and the practical techniques that help you assess them confidently during interviews.

What are soft skills?

Soft skills are the personal qualities and behaviours that shape how someone works, communicates and interacts with others. They include things like communication, adaptability, problem solving, teamwork and emotional intelligence. Unlike technical skills, which can be measured against specific tasks or tools, soft skills are about how a person operates day to day.

Strong soft skills often determine whether a new hire settles in well, builds positive working relationships and contributes to the team beyond their core role. They are usually harder to teach than technical skills, which is why hiring for them matters so much.

Why assessing soft skills in interviews matters

Soft skills shape how a candidate performs once they are in the role, not just whether they can do the job on paper. 

Read more: How to screen candidates for long-term success

Assessing them properly at the interview stage gives you a much stronger picture of long-term fit.

These are the main reasons it matters.

Soft skills predict long-term performance

Technical skills tell you whether someone can do the job today. Soft skills tell you whether they will keep performing as the role, team and business change. Most senior hiring managers we speak to say their best hires consistently have strong soft skills alongside the technical ability.

This matters more in fast-moving sectors. Tools change, projects shift and team structures evolve. Candidates who can communicate, adapt and solve problems well tend to keep adding value through all of that.

They shape how candidates fit with teams and culture

How a candidate works with others can make or break a hire. Strong technical skills do not always translate into strong collaboration, and the cost of a hire who does not fit the team is often higher than employers expect.

Assessing soft skills helps you understand how a candidate is likely to interact with colleagues, handle disagreements and contribute to the wider culture. These are the things that often determine whether a hire feels successful six months in.

They reduce the risk of costly mis-hires

A bad hire is expensive. Recruitment costs, onboarding time, lost productivity and the impact on team morale all add up quickly. Soft skills are often where these mis-hires originate, because technical credentials can mask behavioural gaps that only show up once someone is in the role.

Assessing soft skills properly during interviews helps surface those gaps earlier, when you can still adjust your decision. This protects both the new hire and the team they would join.

Which soft skills should you assess?

Not every role requires the same mix of soft skills. The best place to start is to think about what the role and team actually need day to day, then focus your assessment on those areas.

These are the soft skills we see come up most often in hiring conversations.

Communication

Communication covers how clearly someone explains their thinking, listens to others and adjusts their style to different audiences. It is one of the most universal soft skills because almost every role requires some form of interaction with colleagues, stakeholders or clients.

Look for candidates who can explain complex ideas simply, ask thoughtful questions and listen as well as they speak. These are the people who tend to build stronger relationships and work more smoothly across teams.

Adaptability

Adaptability is the ability to handle change, learn new things and adjust when priorities shift. In fast-moving sectors, this is one of the most useful soft skills a candidate can bring.

Candidates who score well on adaptability tend to talk about times they handled change, picked up new tools or pivoted when a project shifted direction. Look for evidence rather than claims about being flexible.

Read more: The importance of hiring for adaptability

Problem solving

Problem solving is about how a candidate breaks down a challenge, considers options and arrives at a workable answer. It is not just about technical problem solving, but how they think.

Strong problem solvers explain their thinking process, not just the outcome. They often reference how they weighed up choices, consulted others or learned from things that did not work first time.

Teamwork and collaboration

Most roles involve working with other people, even in highly technical positions. Teamwork covers how a candidate contributes to a group, handles disagreement and supports colleagues.

Look for candidates who give credit to others, talk about shared outcomes and explain how they have adapted their style to work with different personalities. Candidates who only ever talk in "I" rarely make strong team players.

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise your own emotions and those of others, and to use that awareness to manage interactions well. It often shows up in how candidates handle stress, deliver difficult feedback or work with people they do not naturally agree with.

This is particularly important for senior or leadership hires, where the ability to read a room and respond well can shape entire teams. Candidates with strong emotional intelligence tend to talk thoughtfully about people, not just tasks.

How to assess soft skills in interviews

Once you know which soft skills matter most for the role, the next step is building an assessment approach that actually surfaces them. Soft skills are harder to evaluate than technical ones because there is no clear right or wrong answer, so the structure of your interview makes a real difference.

These are the techniques we recommend.

Use behavioural interview questions

Behavioural questions ask candidates to describe how they handled a specific situation in the past. The thinking is simple: past behaviour is one of the strongest predictors of future behaviour. Questions like "Tell me about a time you had to manage a difficult stakeholder" give you concrete examples to assess, not just opinions.

The best behavioural questions are specific and tied to the soft skills you care about. Avoid asking the same generic questions every candidate has heard before. Tailor them to the role and the qualities you are looking for.

Read more: Best interview questions to ask candidates

Pose realistic scenarios and role-plays

Scenario-based questions and short role-plays put candidates into situations close to what they will actually face in the role. Asking "How would you handle a situation where two colleagues disagree on the right approach?" reveals how someone thinks under pressure and what their natural approach looks like.

Keep scenarios realistic and short. The goal is not to trick the candidate but to give them a fair chance to show how they would think through a real situation. This is often where the strongest candidates stand out.

Listen for examples that show evidence

The strongest soft skills assessment is grounded in examples. When candidates claim to have a strength, ask them to back it up with a specific story. A candidate who says they are great at communication should be able to give you a clear example of a time their communication made a difference.

If you only get general statements without examples, that is a signal in itself. Real strengths usually come with stories attached.

Score candidates using a structured framework

Subjective impressions vary from one interviewer to another, which makes soft skills feel harder to assess than they need to be. A simple scoring framework with the key soft skills you are looking for, along with what good and weak answers look like, brings consistency to the process.

This helps you compare candidates fairly and reduces the influence of gut feel. It also makes feedback discussions much easier because everyone is working from the same reference points.

Involve multiple interviewers for a balanced view

Different interviewers pick up on different things. One might focus on technical ability, another on communication style and another on cultural fit. Using two or three interviewers across the process gives you a more rounded view of the candidate's soft skills.

Comparing notes after the interview is one of the most useful steps. Where interviewers disagree, those gaps are often where the most interesting insight lies.

Common mistakes employers make when assessing soft skills

Even experienced hiring managers can fall into a few common traps when assessing soft skills. Being aware of these helps you avoid them.

These are the mistakes we see most often.

Relying on gut feel

Gut feel has its place, but it should not be the main way you assess soft skills. Decisions based purely on whether you "click" with a candidate often introduce bias and reduce the consistency of hiring across your business.

A more structured approach, with clear questions and scoring, gives you a stronger basis for the final decision. Gut feel can support that, but it should not lead it.

Asking only hypothetical questions

Hypothetical questions are useful, but they tell you what a candidate thinks they would do, not what they have actually done. Candidates can rehearse strong hypothetical answers without any real evidence behind them.

Balance hypothetical questions with behavioural ones. Asking what someone has done in the past usually gives you a more accurate picture than asking what they would do in future.

Confusing personality with skill

Soft skills and personality are related but not the same. A confident, outgoing candidate is not automatically a better communicator. A quieter candidate is not automatically less adaptable. Conflating the two leads to hiring decisions based on style rather than substance.

Focus on evidence of how candidates have used the soft skill, not on whether they match a particular personality type. This protects you from bias and produces stronger hires.

How to make soft skills assessment a consistent part of your process

Strong soft skills assessment is not a one-off effort. It is something that gets embedded into how your business interviews and hires.

These are the steps that help you make it consistent.

Build it into your scorecards

Add the soft skills you care about into your interview scorecards alongside the technical and experience criteria. This signals to interviewers that soft skills are part of the assessment, not an optional extra.

Scorecards with both hard and soft skills give you a balanced view of every candidate and make it easier to compare like with like.

Train hiring managers on what to look for

Most hiring managers have been trained to assess technical credentials, not behaviour. A short training session or guide on how to interview for soft skills can make a real difference to the consistency of your process.

Help them understand what good and weak answers look like, how to ask follow-up questions and how to score fairly. This investment quickly pays back in stronger hires.

Read more: How to interview candidates: A complete guide for hiring managers

Partner with a recruitment agency that screens for soft skills

A specialist recruitment partner often acts as the first soft skills filter in your hiring process. Recruiters who speak to candidates regularly can spot communication style, motivation and adaptability long before the formal interview stage.

At Digital Waffle, we screen for soft skills alongside technical fit when shortlisting candidates across tech, digital, data and marketing. We share what we observe during our conversations, which gives hiring teams a stronger starting point and saves interview time on candidates who would not have been the right fit.

Assessing soft skills well is one of the most useful things you can do to improve your hiring. Technical skills get the role done. Soft skills decide how well it is done and how long the person stays to do it.

Employers who build soft skills assessment into their process consistently make stronger, more confident hiring decisions. With the right questions, a clear framework and a balanced view across the interview team, soft skills become much easier to evaluate.

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