Interviewing for a new position? As leading talent advisors for the greater New York and Charlotte regions, Phyton knows that you need to do more than demonstrate your technical abilities, you also need to showcase your soft skills, too.

What are soft skills?
These are the personal traits, habits and attitudes that are unique to you. These not only impact how you approach your job, but also how you interact with others, including colleagues and customers. Some of these can be learned, while others are more innate.

You may have heard the term, but maybe not. Soft skills can be a deciding factor between you and other candidates getting a job. Soft skills are the personal traits, habits and attitudes that are unique to you. No hiring manager will directly ask you about soft skills in an interview, so it’s up to you to showcase them. The secret is to talk about your soft skills as part of how you answer the interview questions. Soft skills not only impact how you approach your job or role, but how you interact with colleagues, team members and clients.

Below are our top three most important soft skills, and ways you can demonstrate each one:

1. Communication

Whether it’s verbal or written, communication skills are critically important in every field. One way to demonstrate yours is to thoroughly prepare ahead of time so that you can articulately answer all the questions the hiring manager asks. Not only that, but you can also demonstrate your listening skills by asking your own insightful questions.

2. Collaboration

Employers want team members who work well independently, as well as part of a team. They know collaboration is vital to innovation. To communicate your abilities in this area, discuss a project you worked on where collaboration played a key role to a successful outcome. Avoid making too many ‘I’ statements and replace them with ‘we’ statements.

3. Critical thinking

This is another high-demand soft skill that many employers are after. One standout place where you can highlight your problem-solving abilities is when you’re asked to describe a past accomplishment. Rather than just saying what you did, describe how you did it. Outline the steps you took to reach the end result. You can talk about how you overcame obstacles along the way to success or how you found a solution by addressing challenges as they came up.

While hard skills are important for completing technical tasks, strong soft skills will make you the kind of worker employers want to hire, keep and promote. It’s important to highlight the soft skills you have at all stages of the job search process and continue developing those skills once you find the job you’re looking for.