Uncovering Soft Skills: How Structured and Unstructured Interviews Shape the Modern Workforce

As companies strive to build high-performing teams, the demand for soft skills—traits like communication, adaptability, and emotional intelligence—continues to grow. While technical skills get candidates in the door, it’s often their soft skills that determine success in collaborative, dynamic workplaces. Identifying these less tangible qualities can be challenging, however, and hiring managers need the right interview methods to assess them effectively.

Two primary types of interview approaches—structured and unstructured—offer distinct advantages in evaluating a candidate’s soft skills. But how can organizations leverage each method to get a well-rounded perspective? In this blog, we’ll explore the critical role of soft skills in the workplace and how structured and unstructured interviews can be used to identify these valuable qualities in potential hires.

The Rising Importance of Soft Skills

Soft skills encompass a range of interpersonal, emotional, and cognitive abilities that are often hard to quantify but essential for success in today’s workplace. They include attributes like:

Communication: Verbal, non-verbal, and written communication skills are crucial for teamwork, client interactions, and conveying ideas clearly.

Adaptability: The ability to adjust to change and remain flexible is invaluable, especially in fast-evolving industries.

Problem-Solving and Critical Thinking: These skills enable employees to navigate challenges effectively and make sound decisions.

Teamwork and Collaboration: Many roles require cross-functional collaboration, where teamwork skills are a necessity.

Emotional Intelligence: Managing one’s own emotions and understanding others’ perspectives is central to effective leadership and conflict resolution.

As workplaces evolve and remote work becomes more common, these skills are increasingly seen as predictors of long-term success. Technical proficiency alone isn’t enough; employees need the resilience, interpersonal skills, and adaptability that allow them to thrive under varying circumstances.

The Challenge: Assessing Soft Skills in Interviews

Soft skills, by nature, are subjective and harder to evaluate than technical skills. Unlike hard skills, which can be proven through certifications, tests, or portfolio work, soft skills require a closer look at a candidate’s behavior, personality, and past experiences.

Here’s where interview style plays a pivotal role. Different approaches, specifically structured and unstructured interviews, can be combined strategically to provide a fuller understanding of candidates’ soft skills, helping to ensure that only those best suited for the company culture and the job’s demands are selected.

Structured Interviews: Precision and Consistency in Soft Skills Assessment

Structured interviews involve a set of standardized questions asked in the same order for every candidate. This method allows hiring teams to focus on specific skills or competencies that are critical to the role, making it easier to compare candidates objectively.

How Structured Interviews Benefit Soft Skills Evaluation

Consistency and Fairness: Because structured interviews rely on predetermined questions, they help minimize interviewer bias and create a fairer comparison between candidates.

Specific Skill Assessment: Interviewers can develop targeted questions to probe particular soft skills. For example, asking candidates to describe a time they had to navigate a difficult team dynamic or resolve a conflict allows interviewers to evaluate communication, empathy, and emotional intelligence.

Behavioral and Situational Questions: In structured interviews, using behavioral questions (e.g., “Tell me about a time you faced a challenging project”) and situational questions (e.g., “How would you handle a disagreement with a colleague?”) can elicit responses that showcase a candidate’s soft skills.

Data-Driven Insights: Structured interviews allow hiring teams to rate each response, creating quantifiable data. This helps HR and management see patterns and make data-backed decisions about a candidate’s strengths and potential weaknesses.

While structured interviews are useful for assessing core competencies in a predictable, fair manner, they can sometimes feel rigid and fail to fully capture a candidate’s personality or nuanced interpersonal skills. This is where unstructured interviews can complement the process.

Unstructured Interviews: Exploring the Depth of a Candidate’s Soft Skills

Unstructured interviews take a more conversational, free-form approach. Rather than following a strict question set, interviewers may adapt their questions based on the candidate’s responses, allowing the conversation to flow naturally.

The Role of Unstructured Interviews in Soft Skills Evaluation

Flexibility to Explore Personality: With fewer restrictions, interviewers have the freedom to follow up on interesting or revealing responses, which can provide deeper insight into the candidate’s personality and soft skills. For example, if a candidate mentions a challenging project, the interviewer can ask follow-up questions to further explore the candidate’s problem-solving and collaboration skills.

Genuine Responses: Candidates may feel more at ease in an unstructured setting, which can help them express themselves more openly. This authenticity often reveals qualities like enthusiasm, curiosity, and empathy that might be harder to observe in a structured format.

Adaptability and Spontaneity: Since unstructured interviews are less predictable, they reveal how candidates handle unexpected questions, showing their adaptability and quick thinking.

Assessing Cultural Fit: Cultural fit is often easier to gauge through an open conversation. As the interviewer asks open-ended questions, they can get a sense of the candidate’s values, work style, and how they might mesh with the existing team.

Despite these benefits, unstructured interviews do come with drawbacks. They are more susceptible to bias, and different interviewers might evaluate the same response in varying ways, making it harder to compare candidates directly.

Combining Structured and Unstructured Interviews for a Balanced Approach

Since both structured and unstructured interviews have unique strengths, a hybrid approach can be highly effective, especially for roles where soft skills are crucial. Here’s how to integrate both methods into your interview process:

Start with a Structured Component: Begin with a set of core questions that each candidate answers. This helps the interviewer assess foundational soft skills, like teamwork and adaptability, while ensuring a level of consistency and fairness across candidates.

Transition to an Unstructured Format: After the structured segment, allow the conversation to flow more naturally. This lets the interviewer ask follow-up questions based on the candidate’s responses, diving deeper into specific experiences or character traits that emerged in the initial round.

Use Scoring Rubrics Wisely: Even within the unstructured portion, interviewers can use general scoring rubrics to track soft skills consistently. For example, they might rate a candidate’s communication skills or adaptability based on observations from the entire conversation.

Debrief and Cross-Check: Bringing in multiple interviewers or conducting panel interviews can help mitigate any individual bias. Post-interview debriefs provide an opportunity to cross-check observations and discuss any conflicting assessments.

By combining both interview types, hiring managers gain a comprehensive understanding of each candidate’s soft skills, allowing for a holistic assessment that encompasses consistency, fairness, and adaptability.

Sample Questions for Soft Skills Assessment

To further support soft skills evaluation, here are some examples of questions that work well in structured and unstructured interview settings:

Structured Question for Communication: “Describe a time you had to convey a complex idea to a colleague or client. How did you ensure they understood it?”

Structured Question for Adaptability: “Can you give an example of when you had to adapt quickly to a change at work? What did you learn from the experience?”

Unstructured Follow-Up: “That’s interesting! How did you personally feel about the change, and did you have a chance to express that to your team?”

Unstructured Cultural Fit: “If you had the freedom to create your ideal work environment, what would it look like?”

Conclusion: Building a Workforce Ready for the Future

In a world where collaboration, empathy, and adaptability are becoming indispensable, evaluating soft skills effectively is crucial. Structured interviews bring the rigor needed for objective decision-making, while unstructured interviews offer a window into a candidate’s personality and cultural fit. By blending these methods, organizations can develop a hiring process that not only identifies talent with the necessary technical skills but also uncovers the interpersonal strengths that drive innovation and cohesion.

This holistic approach to interviews enables companies to build resilient, adaptable teams—ready to tackle today’s challenges and future-proofed for tomorrow’s demands.