Soft Skills Are the New Hard Skills: Evaluating Soft Skills in Technical Roles
Technical hiring has often been seen as fairly straightforward: find someone with the right stack, verify they can do the work, and bring them on board. But as AI speeds up development and automates more routine tasks, teams now rely more heavily than ever on communication, collaboration, and adaptability to keep projects aligned. AI can generate code, but it can’t untangle a misunderstanding between stakeholders, identify hidden assumptions, or steady a team when priorities shift. For many hiring managers, these human capabilities often predict long-term success more accurately than a candidate’s mastery of any particular framework or tool. The challenge is that soft skills are far harder to measure. You can test for technical expertise , but you can’t reliably gauge communication style, critical thinking, or real-world problem-solving from a polished interview answer. That’s why evaluating soft skills in technical roles has become one of the most critical—and most complex—parts o...