SourceCon - Spring 2017

LinkedIn’s recent Global Recruiting Trends report unearthed an unexpected finding: talent leaders ranked the use of soft skills assessments among the top hiring trends for 2017. Despite the demand, however, employers still struggle to find candidates with strong soft skills. Could a shift in the way we source be the solution?

Jennifer Shappley, Sr Director, Talent Acquisition at LinkedIn will explore how sourcing for soft skills -- personal attributes that help people interact effectively with others, like communication, teamwork, and critical thinking -- is a process that takes a combination of human investigation and automation.

Using company insights and data, Jennifer will discuss the following:

• Industries, talent levels and geographical indicators that provide specific trends in candidates with strong soft skills -- pulled from the LinkedIn platform.

• The addressable market of people mapped to soft skills as listed (and endorsed) on their profiles by these criteria.

• Top 10 soft skills sourcers should look for in a candidate, and the technology that enables targeting the addressable market.

• A specific example mapping hard and soft skills together in a search for a specific role to illustrate how you can do this too on other across similar segments and on other platforms.

• Tactics that will help make finding those adaptable, creative candidates, a walk in the park.

With 58 percent of hiring managers finding that the lack of soft skills among candidates is “limiting their company’s productivity,” soft skills are proving to be exceedingly important to the bottom line. Jennifer will spark a thought provoking conversation on how the sourcing community can pivot to meet those needs.