TL/DR: Hard skills can be taught. Soft skills can be developed over time. Natural talent traits are largely innate and are the underlying strengths and tendencies people bring to the job. Together, they help predict success in a role. Most hiring processes evaluate the first two and overlook the third.
When companies post a job, most of the requirements read as “X years of experience, Y degree, and industry knowledge in Z.” These are technical qualifications that are easy to verify and set a baseline level for job understanding. But they’re also not a great way to actually hire someone truly aligned with a role. Understanding the difference between hard skills, soft skills, and natural talent traits is essential if you want to hire for talent.
What are Hard Skills?
Hard skills are technical competencies used to perform a job. They’re typically learned through education, training, or on-the-job experience, and are straightforward to verify. These are often demonstrated through a degree, certification, portfolio, work samples, or other verifiable accomplishments.
Examples of hard skills include:
- Writing
- Data Analysis
- Accounting
- Graphic Design
- Coding
- CRM Software
- SEO
- Social Media
- Market Research
- Video Editing
A good rule of thumb is if you can train someone to do it, then it’s a hard skill. If someone comes into your organization, they’re going to need to learn your product and how you operate specific systems and software. These are hard skills.
What are Soft Skills?
Soft skills can be developed, but typically require practice, feedback, coaching, and experience over time. They’re often more difficult to evaluate than hard skills because they tend to reveal themselves through behavior rather than credentials or certifications. In many cases, the ease with which someone develops a soft skill is influenced by their underlying talent traits.
Examples of soft skills include:
- Communication
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- Critical Thinking
- Time Management
- Conflict Resolution
- Negotiation
- Presententing
- Decision-Making
- Coaching
Unlike hard skills, soft skills aren’t typically learned through a course or certification. They tend to develop through experience, feedback, coaching, and practice over time. Because they reveal themselves through behavior, they’re often more difficult to evaluate during the hiring process than hard skills.
What are Natural Talent Traits?
Natural talent traits are behavioral tendencies and motivational drives that are fundamentally part of how someone is wired. They’re not skills someone has learned, and they’re different from soft skills, which can be developed and strengthened over time. Talent traits are how someone naturally processes information and interacts with the world around them.
Examples of natural talent traits include:
- Sense of Urgency
- Competitiveness
- Consistency
- Flexibility
- Persistence
- Tolerance for Risk
- Compliance
- Versatility
- Preference for Structure
- Collaborative
Think of talent traits as the underlying tendencies that influence how someone naturally thinks, communicates, solves problems, and approaches their work. What makes someone naturally inclined to develop a soft skill or learn a hard skill? That’s a talent trait. So when you read a resume, you’re looking for hard skills. When you conduct an interview, you’re looking for soft skills. And when you hire someone, you should hire them for their natural talent traits, because knowing how to hire for talent means hiring for what someone is naturally built to do, not just what they’ve done before.
A three-column comparison of hard skills, soft skills, and talent traits, including examples of each and how they develop.
How to Combine All Three When Hiring
- Understand what the role needs. Start with understanding what hard skills, soft skills, and talent traits the job needs to support success. Not just the tasks or requirements, but the actual behavioral traits someone will need. Do they need to work well with others? Communicate well over email? Handle high levels of stress? Those answers should become the benchmark candidates get measured against.
- Use hard skills to qualify. A resume will be full of hard skills. Use this to determine who enters the next stage of the interview. Especially for more technical jobs where having a degree or specific industry experience is mandatory for safety or general productivity.
- Ask behavioral questions during an interview. Behavioral questions tell you what someone has done; how they acted in a particular situation. Asking someone to walk you through a particular situation provides insight into their real experiences and how they apply their soft skills in the workplace. Start your behavioral questions with phrases like “give me an example of when you’ve done ‘x’.
- Use talent assessments to reveal natural talent traits. Once you’ve identified a strong candidate, talent assessments can help you understand how closely that person’s natural talent traits align with the role, the team and the environment. Assessments don’t make the hiring decision for you, but they provide information that may not be visible through resumes and interviews alone.
The Difference You’ll Experience
Companies that learn how to hire for talent, evaluating hard skills, soft skills, and natural talent traits together, will skip months of frustration and uncertainty. Imagine not spending three to six months trying to determine whether a new hire is aligned with the role. You gain more confidence in your hiring decisions and valuable insight into how to engage, manage, and develop employees over time, which often contributes to lower turnover. When someone is using their natural talent traits to develop their soft skills and learn new hard skills, they’ll be more likely to be engaged, productive, and fulfilled in their work. In the end, you’ll have a team of people who are genuinely doing what they do best.
Want the Full Playbook?
At Hiring By Design, we equip leaders with the tools and frameworks to take the guesswork out of hiring so you can start hiring by design. Grab the full hiring playbook: Identifying and Engaging the Best Talent for Your Business
