Teamwork, stress management, adaptability and active listening are establishing themselves as key skills in the professional world. According to a study conducted by HR Maps, 67% of HR managers accept less developed technical skills for open positions in favour of soft skills. Yet 95% of recruiters rely on the face-to-face interview to assess transversal competencies, which can lead to biased analysis. Artificial intelligence and its applications are increasingly facilitating the evaluation of soft skills, taking up the challenge of making the invisible visible.
Why Evaluating Soft Skills Has Become a Key Organisational Challenge
Poor assessment of behavioural competencies at the point of hiring decisions weakens collaboration. 89% of talent departures within less than a year are linked to this poor assessment, according to a study by Mark Murphy covering 20,000 new hires. A lack of leadership or poor emotional intelligence undermines the capacity to work effectively in teams.
Essential Competencies That Have Long Been Neglected
Soft skills are relational and behavioural abilities, either innate or acquired over time through experience and extra-curricular activities. Understanding precisely what they cover has long remained vague and has improved only slowly.
Only 46% of respondents to Lefebvre Dalloz's 2024 Soft Skills Barometer consider them to be strategic elements for their organisation. Yet transversal competencies provide valuable information about a candidate's personality and adaptability during the recruitment process. Why have they been neglected? Evaluating technical skills is simpler than analysing critical thinking. Measuring soft skills requires adapted evaluation tools and assessments.
Direct Impact on Performance, Adaptability and Collaboration
The LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2023 provides an overview of the importance of soft skills in the world of work. 92% of recruiters consider them equivalent to hard skills in terms of impact.
A candidate with excellent abilities in problem-solving, communication, emotional intelligence, critical thinking or time management integrates more effectively into teams, proves more productive and develops more quickly through continuous training. Soft skills facilitate the service relationship with increasingly demanding clients. They are less subject to obsolescence than technical skills. According to a McKinsey study, organisations that focus on employee development record a 28% increase in profitability.
The Need to Objectify Dimensions That Have Until Now Remained Vague
Agility and adaptability occupy a central place in today's professional challenges. Human skills such as communication, stress management and collaboration are taking on great importance. Despite the body of scientific work on these competencies, soft skills still present a conceptual weakness. This vagueness becomes problematic when they serve as a basis for recruitment decisions.
Professional conduct can be understood from several angles. Measuring it makes it possible to objectify these competencies in order to improve recruitment and employees' professional development.
What Approaches Are Available Today for Evaluating Soft Skills?
Transversal competencies remain complex to identify and measure, as they are often linked to personality traits that only reveal themselves in concrete situations. New methods and tools are emerging to analyse these soft skills in a more reliable way and to make their evaluation more objective.
360° Assessment, Cross-Referencing Feedback, Self-Positioning
Personal capabilities are assessed using psychometric tools, questionnaires and tests. Idiographic tools detect the individual modes of functioning specific to each candidate. Nomothetic tools serve to rank candidates' soft skills relative to one another. These results remain largely self-reported.
Evaluation gains in reliability when it combines several approaches: interviews and practical scenarios, collaborative 360° feedback with the involvement of managers, teams and internal clients, and direct observation of behaviours in working situations. The way in which these transversal competencies are deployed day-to-day matters more than categorised or quantified results.
The Contribution of Digital Tools to the Structuring and Analysis of Results
According to Lefebvre Dalloz's 2024 Soft Skills Barometer, only 19% of organisations use or plan to use tools for evaluating transversal competencies. 75% of other organisations entrust this analysis to managers, whether or not they have been trained in the subject. Yet digital tools offer a structured and methodical approach, whilst also giving value to verbal and non-verbal responses.
They guarantee a precise, immersive and objective approach through the power of artificial intelligence. Assessment Centres make it possible to analyse weak signals: facial expressions, tone of voice, lexical choices. Skills-tracking tools then make it possible to visualise the data and build a picture of candidates free from human bias, by facilitating the collection of anonymous responses and the structured compilation of results.
Limitations and Conditions for Success of These Approaches
The prediction of a candidate's behaviour in a working context remains limited, regardless of the quality of the evaluation tool. A poorly calibrated technology can perpetuate stereotypes rather than correcting them. Digital tools also focus on micro-behaviours, without always placing them in the broader context of the organisation.
The use of assessment grids during interviews makes it possible to compare candidates using predefined parameters, reducing the risk of subjective bias and strengthening the consistency of recruitment decisions.
Integrating the Assessment of Soft Skills Into a Development Strategy
To make the assessment of soft skills a genuine development lever, organisations must identify the relevant abilities and evaluate them frequently. The strategy includes developing these competencies through training and the use of appropriate tools.
Using Results to Personalise Skills Development Pathways
Assessing soft skills facilitates a clear picture of each individual's behavioural competencies. On the basis of these results, HR teams can define individual development objectives, adjust training pathways and guide the selection of appropriate learning tools.
The continuous analysis of transversal competencies makes it possible to identify talents capable of serving as reference people or mentors for other employees, creating a virtuous cycle of development within the organisation.
Raising the Awareness of Managers and Employees About the Importance of These Competencies
Precisely defining the expected behaviours and values in terms of soft skills is a structurally important step. Line managers play a key role in effectively integrating them into recruitment processes, performance evaluation and internal communication.
Training sessions on conflict management, knowledge sharing, active listening or collaborative leadership, a culture of regular feedback and the recognition of soft skills successes create the conditions for managers to champion this subject. Awareness workshops and tailored training allow employees to put their transversal competencies into practice in team projects or simulations.
Recognising Soft Skills in Interviews, Internal Mobility and Career Pathways
Integrating soft skills into a development strategy requires a clear reference framework of the most relevant behavioural competencies for each role. Recruiters would be well advised to highlight these competencies in interviews, demonstrating concretely how they will serve in the target role or facilitate future internal mobility.
Communicating about the internal career pathways that soft skills can open and supporting talented employees in their development embeds the development of transversal competencies as a lasting competitive advantage.
