How to Evaluate Soft Skills During the Job Interview

Technical skills get people shortlisted. Soft skills decide who actually gets hired^, and who succeeds once they're in the seat. That's the view of Airida Zavadske, Founder and CEO at Addelse | Developing Organizations and Leaders for Strategic Growth, who spoke with Dana Kocane about how hiring teams can move beyond gut feel when assessing traits like adaptability, resilience, and collaboration. 

Zavadske brings more than 20 years of experience in the assessment business, having worked previously in recruitment and now running Addelse, where she helps organizations build assessment systems for hiring and leadership development. 

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Why Soft Skills Are Getting Harder to Ignore 

Airida Zavadske: ^“While technical expertise is crucial, soft skills such as adaptability, learning ability, curiosity, resilience, and collaboration are equally important^, rapid technological change and the need for real teamwork in IT and other fast-moving environments make them essential, not optional^”

Dana noted that these same traits - adaptability, resilience - now show up in nearly every job requirement, regardless of role or industry. The shift means personality, values, and interpersonal ability are no longer a tiebreaker between similarly qualified candidates. For many roles, they're the primary filter. 

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The Core Problem: Interviews Are an Artificial Test 

Ask a candidate “are you adaptable?” and almost everyone says yes. According to Zavadske, the deeper issue isn't dishonesty ^- it's the format itself. 

^“Interviews are highly artificial situations that don't accurately predict how candidates will behave under real work pressure. Some candidates perform well simply because they prepared for the interview, while others become stressed and underperform^, which makes it difficult to judge their actual long-term capability from that one conversation alone^”

That mismatch - between interview performance and job performance - is exactly why relying on gut feel after a single conversation is so unreliable.

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Ask About the Past, Not the Hypothetical 

Zavadske's recommended fix is behavioral interviewing: asking candidates to describe specific things they've actually done, rather than what they'd hypothetically do. 

^“Behavioral questions work because, unlike investment advice, past behavior actually is a good predictor of future behavior in a work context^, so asking about real past experiences gives you a far more reliable signal than asking someone to speculate about a hypothetical scenario.^”

The follow-up matters as much as the question. Asking a candidate what they learned from a past experience, or pressing for specific details, tends to expose the difference between a rehearsed answer and a genuine one ^-rehearsed stories flatten out or contradict themselves once you dig past the surface. 

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Structured Interviews, Not Freeform Conversations 

Dana asked how to balance assessing both soft skills and cognitive ability without turning the process into an endless string of interviews. Zavadske's answer: structure the interview itself, then add assessments. 

Structured interviews have better predictive power than unstructured ones, and they still allow for a personalized conversation while keeping the process objective. Pairing that with a psychological assessment^, which can surface personality traits and cognitive ability in as little as 15 to 40 minutes^, can reduce the need for multiple rounds of interviews.

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A Three-Step Selection Process 

Zavadske outlined a simple structure hiring teams can apply directly: 

A structured interview built around behavioral questions. An assessment - a well-designed questionnaire or psychometric tool (Zavadske referenced instruments such as Profile XT) that compares candidates objectively on traits like resilience, cognitive ability, and fit to the job profile.  A follow-up interview to walk through the assessment results with the candidate. 

“The goal of interviews and assessments isn't to confirm your first impression of a candidate, it's to challenge it. That's what makes the process a genuine evaluation rather than a formality.”

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Cultural Fit vs. Cultural Add

The conversation also touched on a common hiring bias: mistaking “someone like us” for “someone who's a good fit.” 

Companies should focus on cultural add rather than pure cultural fit. Focusing only on similarity leads to homogenous teams that lack the creativity and balance a business actually needs.

Zavadske drew a clear line between two things that often get treated as the same: 

Personality traits - long-lasting characteristics that don't change much over time.
Soft skills - learnable behaviors that can be developed with coaching and practice. 

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When Assessments Are Worth the Investment 

Psychometric assessments aren't necessary for every hire. Zavadske was specific about when they add the most value. 

“Psychometric assessments are most valuable for high-stakes hires, particularly leadership positions, where understanding someone's natural tendencies and development potential matters most. They're also worth using when you have limited differentiation between candidates, or when you need an objective way to compare several strong applicants against each other.”

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The Takeaway 

Soft skills evaluation fails when it's treated as a vibe check after the “real” interview is over. Zavadske's approach treats it as a discipline: ask about real past behavior, structure the interview instead of freestyling it, use assessments to add objective signals rather than replace judgment, and design the whole process to challenge first impressions rather than confirm them. That combination - structured interview, assessment, follow-up conversation - is what separates hiring decisions built on evidence from ones built on gut feel.

At Tech Recruitment, we help organizations not only hire the right people but also improve long-term retention and build stronger teams. If you're looking to make more evidence-based hiring decisions, we'd be happy to support you.

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