How to Evaluate Soft Skills from a Resume Before the Interview

Technological development is changing the nature of work more rapidly than ever. This transformation of working practices has thrown established hard skills into question, leaving soft skills to become more central to hiring decisions. Employers are increasingly seeking candidates with soft skills that show they’re prepared to handle the pace of change and adapt to new challenges.

But assessing a candidate’s soft skills can be notoriously difficult before the interview stage. Interviewing candidates, only to discover they lack the necessary soft skills for the job, can seriously harm the efficiency of the recruitment process. So, how can top supply chain recruiters and employers make reliable judgements on a candidate’s soft skills from their resume? In this article, we take a look at five key tips to improve your resume soft skills evaluation.

How can you evaluate soft skills from a resume?

If you can confidently evaluate soft skills from a resume, it can save you a lot of time and resources interviewing candidates who won’t be a good fit for the role, or your organization. It might seem like you can only get a handle on a candidate’s soft skills from speaking to them, or seeing them at work. However, there’s plenty you can infer from candidate resumes to suggest their natural strengths, qualities and styles of working. Follow these tips for evaluating candidate soft skills with greater accuracy:

Look for evidence

The most effective way to assess soft skills in a CV is to look for evidence of their impact. It’s one thing for a candidate to list a set of soft skills in their resume that closely match the job description, but it’s quite another to link those skills to achievements and successes in their career. If soft skills are central to the job description, the candidate should be able to provide strong evidence of how they’ve used their skills in the workplace, and the value they added for their employer.

Candidates might provide evidence of their soft skills in various ways. They could mention a specific project and its positive outcomes, or quote direct figures and performance metrics. Here’s an example of two resume bullet points – one with evidence of the impact of soft skills, and one without:

With evidence:

• Led a cross-functional team of 12 to redesign the procurement workflow, reducing supplier lead times by 18% and improving on-time delivery metrics across three regions.

Without evidence:

• Communicated effectively with vendors and internal stakeholders to maintain positive working relationships.

Assess the language used

If the soft skills mentioned in a resume simply mirror the job description, this can set alarm bells ringing. It’s easy to reel off a generic list of desirable workplace skills, especially if they’re not backed-up by evidence to validate them (as mentioned above). However, if the candidate has taken the time to truly consider their best personal qualities and natural strengths, you should receive a far more insightful soft skills summary in their resume.

Be wary of clichés and generic skills that don’t provide much insight into the genuine working style of the candidate. Instead, look for specific, original and unique soft skills that show the candidate has reflected on their own qualities and found new ways of describing them accurately and insightfully. Take a look below at a comparison of some clichéd soft skills and more insightful alternative descriptions:

Consider the context

The career path and progression of the candidate can tell you plenty about their natural strengths and qualities, even if they don’t specifically mention soft skills in their resume.  Consider the choices a candidate has made throughout their career. The types of organization they’ve worked for, the variation of roles, the frequency of job-changing and the speed of their career progression can all offer significant clues about their personality type and key soft skills.

For example, in supply chain roles, a candidate who's worked across manufacturing, distribution, and logistics might indicate strong adaptability and cross-functional collaboration skills. Someone who's quickly risen to more senior levels in procurement or operations is likely to demonstrate proactivity, self-motivation and commitment. Volunteer experience or customer-facing roles can denote interpersonal skills, empathy and problem-solving, while cross-functional positions are a strong indicator of negotiation and collaborative skills.

Evaluate the resume layout

Reading a resume involves a lot more than just scanning the written information. The layout and structure of the resume can also be very telling. The choices the candidate has made regarding layout, design and structure of the document can give you various clues about their soft skills and natural qualities.

A clearly structured, neatly presented resume might indicate attention to detail, while unique, eye-catching design features can tell you all about the candidate’s creativity. If the content follows a logical flow with consistent formatting, this can indicate professionalism and organization skills, while signs of tailoring the CV to the specifics of the role shows a sense of initiative and awareness.

Create a soft skills scoring matrix

Formally building soft skills into the resume evaluation matrix can help you make clearer decisions on the soft skills competencies of each candidate. This can enable you to assess each candidate’s credentials in a more formalized, methodical way.

Starting with the job description, be clear, and as specific as possible, about the soft skills required for the role. This will make it easier to identify the soft skills in each resume. Decide on an evaluation and scoring system that allows for fair, unbiased assessment of soft skills in the same way you would assess hard, technical skills. Dedicating this formal stage of the resume screening and evaluation process to soft skills will help you better understand each candidate profile before the interview.

Once you've screened resumes and identified candidates with strong soft skills, the next step is ensuring your interview process evaluates these competencies consistently. Download SCOPE's FREE Interview Guide & Candidate Scorecards to streamline your interviews, ask the right questions, and evaluate candidates fairly and consistently across your hiring team.

Mike Potter is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and an experienced copywriter specializing in careers and professional development. He uses extensive knowledge of workplace culture to create insightful and actionable articles on CV writing and career pathways.