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With so many candidates to choose from when building your dedicated offshore team, it's not enough to simply look at their education, skills, and experience. You also need to look into their soft skills — which include communication, conflict resolution, integrity, problem solving, and many more.
This article includes a list of the 15 most important offshore staff soft skills to look for when hiring a new team member.
Top 15 Offshore Staff Soft Skills That Candidates Must Have
These same skills are more valued than hard skills by most businesses (92%). According to employers (93%), a candidate’s soft skills can influence their hiring decisions. If you’re looking to grow your business with offshore outsourcing, you need people who bring soft skills to the table — not just hard skills and technical knowledge.
Companies want offshore employees who possess both hard and soft skills. Here are the offshore staff soft skills you should expect from offshore professionals:
1. Conflict Management
This soft skill is not about avoiding an actual conflict in the workplace but resolving one in an efficient manner. Employers want individuals who can handle conflicts diplomatically to breed growth and learning in the office.
2. Time Management
One of the most important soft skills that every employer seeks. Basically, this means that deadlines must be met. You must accomplish all your tasks before a deadline on top of other time-based tasks, such as meetings and presentations to clients.
3. Leadership
Leadership is arguably the most sought-after soft skill that every company wants. It is the ability to influence, motivate, and lead a team to accomplish the final objective. This skill can be nurtured and trained through experience, but employers really want offshore employees to have this right off the bat.
4. Stress Management
For employers, it is important that offshore employees learn to recognize their own stress triggers and have effective ways to manage these levels and ultimately avoid stress from negatively affecting their lives and work.
5. Communication Skills
Having this soft skill means that you can interact and share effectively with others. Employees must know when to talk, what to say, how to address other employees, and determine what is the right tone and dialogue to deliver the right message.
6. Company Culture
This skill involves an employee knowing the importance of building the right culture in a company. By knowing and taking into account what the company culture is, you’ll know how to interact with others with the company in mind.
7. Customer Service
For customer-facing jobs, this skill is the most important. All employees who regularly interact with customers must have the personality and confidence to present the product (product knowledge is a must, too).
8. Problem-solving Skills
There will always be moments when things go south and an employee can only do two things: complain or act. Employers would always prefer the latter, and so would everyone else in the company.
That’s why you should always prepare yourself and practice thinking under pressure and come up with ideas to solve the problem. This is also a surefire way to learn how to take the initiative.
9. Collaboration
As they say: teamwork makes the dream work — and it’s very true for all workplaces today. Almost all projects in a company will require some sort of teamwork, with each member having a specific task to do.
With a deadline and checklists, everyone in the team is expected to work together to achieve the objectives. This soft skill includes delivering clear communication, empathy, problem-solving, accountability, and adaptability.
10. Emotional Intelligence
Related to problem-solving skills, emotional intelligence is about discerning and controlling one’s emotions. It’s a skill in which you can observe your own and other people’s feelings and emotions, then use them to take a valid and correct action. Always pause when emotions are running wild. Stay calm and meditate, take the problem head-on with a sound mind.
11. Adaptability
You have to expect that every company is always changing. When something fails or goes out of hand, managers are going to come up with fresh alternatives to improve the work process. As an offshore employee, you must be ready to experiment and try something new.
12. Creativity
Even though some jobs don’t always leave a lot of space for creativity, it is still one of the essentials in the workplace. Being creative means that you’re willing to take risks while everyone else would hesitate. However, it also means that you’ll be the one who’s more likely to unlock new and meaningful results.
13. Negotiation Skills
This is a vital soft skill for the sales side of the company as well as for employees who are going to present and pitch decks to their clients. Having this skill means that you can persuade and even defend a case. You should be able to negotiate well with clients, suppliers, seniors, and competitors.
14. Persuasion
This ability works hand-in-hand with negotiation. For marketers and salespeople, they need to persuade customers to purchase their product or use their company’s service. As for everyone, an employee is expected to make their case when presenting an idea, present compelling evidence, and ultimately persuade the person on the receiving end to say yes.
15. Professionalism
Professionalism includes an employee’s personal etiquette, attitude, courtesy, dressing, and work ethic. Employers love it when someone can observe established workplace norms and quickly adapt to them. Of course, respect and courtesy are expected from every employee, so you should strive to dress and act the part even during the selection process.
How to Hire the Right Offshore Staff
Building your own dedicated offshore team is a rewarding experience — but only if you choose the right people. Below are four tips for hiring an offshore team member that meets your standards:
1. Know What You Want
A job description can attract the right candidates — or the wrong ones. A clear job description also enables the offshore staffing company to source and match you with the right candidates.
Here are the things to keep in mind when creating a job posting:
- Education and Professional Experience: Do you prefer your offshore talent to be college-talented and have a particular certification? How many years of experience does the role require? This depends on your business needs. If your workplace lacks high-level talent, then a senior- or executive-level professional may be the best option.
- Skills and Knowledge: What are the skills and knowledge required for the job? For example, you’ll want a candidate with a strong knowledge of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and accounting standards and regulations if you’re outsourcing accounting to the Philippines. Likewise, you’ll want to hire a graphic designer who has an excellent grasp of typography and color theory.
- Technical Expertise: What software solutions and tools is your company using? Many clients prefer an offshore employee who has experience using their software.
- Soft Skills: What soft skills do you want to see in your offshore employee? For instance, negotiation and interpersonal skills are especially handy for outsourcing customer service and other client-facing roles.
- Job Responsibilities: What’s a typical day like in the role? What are the things the candidate is expected to do during the work week? Succinctly outlining job responsibilities allows the candidate to envision themselves in the position and evaluate whether the job is right for them.
2. Prepare Interview Questions
The interview is the most important part of the screening process. While face-to-face interviews have their merits, don’t let distance and time zone differences hinder you from conducting high-quality interviews:
Here are general and behavioral interview questions you can ask a potential offshore employee:
General Interview Questions:
- What is your experience working remotely?
- What are your strengths and weaknesses?
- What is your previous work experience?
- What do you think are the most important skills to succeed in this role?
Behavioral/Situational Interview Questions:
- How do you stay on top of multiple deliverables?
- How do you resolve conflicts with a peer or customer?
- How do you get up to speed with new industry trends and developments?
- What challenges have you faced in managing an offshore team? How did you overcome them?
3. Watch Out for Red Flags
While candidates tend to put their best foot forward during the interview (not to mention that their resumes only tell a part of the story), this is also a great opportunity to detect red flags and weed out ill-fit candidates from your team. Below are some red flags to look out for:
- Inflated work experience and skills.
- Unable to provide clear answers related to technical expertise.
- Lackluster communication skills.
- Long gaps in employment.
- Unprofessional interview behavior.
4. Provide A Test Task
Stellar resume? Check.
Great answers to interview questions? Check.
High-quality portfolio? Check.
Despite these, though, you may still be a little reluctant to hire that candidate. The solution? A test task — designed to assess an applicant’s knowledge, skill level, and ability to follow instructions and briefs and meet deadlines.
By giving a test task, you can predict an applicant’s future job performance based on the quality of the accomplished task and gauge whether the applicant is the right fit.
Find Skilled and Emotionally Intelligent Offshore Staff With KDCI Outsourcing
The hiring landscape is abundant in talent, but finding people who are the right fit for your organization has its own set of challenges.
At KDCI Outsourcing, we specialize in finding the right people when building your offshore team in any field, whether it’s accounting and finance, content creation, human resources, marketing, or software development.
Choose KDCI Outsourcing
With our large database of talent, we are more than capable of finding people who have the skills, experience, and soft skills you're looking for.
Learn more about KDCI's tailored offshore outsourcing solutions. Contact us today!
