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9 October 2025, 09:00
2025-10-09
“The candidate said he couldn’t speak English in the morning because of COVID-19.” How IT recruiters assess candidates’ soft skills and what questions they ask: insights from EPAM, Ciklum, EVO and seven other IT employers
Everyone usually smiles at interviews, but it is soft skills that decide who stays after the trial period. Today, IT increasingly values not only knowledge, but also how people interact, listen and react. Recruiters have long said that they are looking for not just technically savvy specialists, but also people who are pleasant to work with, team players with developed empathy, communication skills, etc. We learned how IT recruiters and managers actually value these skills — and where the line is between «emotionally mature» and «overconfident». Moreover, recruiters told what «tricky» questions they ask candidates to assess their human qualities.
Everyone usually smiles at interviews, but it is soft skills that decide who stays after the trial period. Today, IT increasingly values not only knowledge, but also how people interact, listen and react. Recruiters have long said that they are looking for not just technically savvy specialists, but also people who are pleasant to work with, team players with developed empathy, communication skills, etc. We learned how IT recruiters and managers actually value these skills — and where the line is between «emotionally mature» and «overconfident». Moreover, recruiters told what «tricky» questions they ask candidates to assess their human qualities.
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Alina Burkovska, IT Recruiter IdeaSoft
For our recruiting team, soft skills are as important as technical competencies. The Ukrainian IT market in 2025 is actively integrated into global projects, where teams are distributed between different countries. In such conditions, it is flexible skills that determine how quickly and comfortably a new specialist adapts, as well as how effective team interaction will be.
Our methods:
1. Competency-based interview — we test a set of key behavioral competencies that are important for a specific role:
Team interaction (give examples where the candidate collaborated or shared responsibility).
Communication (how clearly he/she communicates thoughts, whether he/she knows how to listen).
Leadership and proactivity (initiative, ability to lead others).
Adaptability (how quickly one responds to changes, what one does in crisis conditions).
We ask a series of questions to see real patterns of behavior, not just theoretical answers.
2. Situational questions — we offer scenarios that are as close as possible to work realities: «Imagine that a project presents conflicting priorities. How would you act?» Here you can see how the candidate communicates and argues.
3. Observation during a technical interview — we pay attention to how the candidate explains his decisions, whether he knows how to listen to a colleague, and how he reacts to clarifications or criticism.
4. Reference check — short calls to former colleagues or managers help to paint a realistic picture of teamwork, responsibility, and flexibility.
Our «tricky» questions are as follows:
«What annoys you the most about your colleagues and how do you deal with it?»
«Tell me about the most unsuccessful project in your career. What would you change if you had a second chance?»
«How do you react when your idea is rejected?»
«Imagine joining a team that has been working for six months without tests or documentation. What would be the first steps?»
For us, soft skills are not a «bonus», but a necessary component of successful teamwork. In 2025, the Ukrainian IT market values specialists who can adapt quickly, build transparent communication, and work effectively in cross-cultural teams. That is why we pay the same attention to testing soft skills as we do to technical interviews.
Valeria Belyavtseva, Recruiter and Boosta
For us, not only the candidate’s technical knowledge is important, but also developed soft skills. That is why we actively use competency-based interviews — one of the most effective modern assessment methods. Its essence is that we do not ask general questions like: «Are you a team player?», but ask to give real examples: «Tell me about a case when you had difficulties in teamwork. How did you solve them?». Thus, we evaluate not words, but the specific behavior of the candidate.
To keep the answers structured, we use the STAR (Situation — Task — Action — Result) approach. It helps the candidate clearly describe the situation, the task, their own actions, and the result.
We test key competencies, including:
1. Teamwork.
What we ask: «Tell me about a situation when you worked in a group andencountered difficulties.»
What we are looking for: whether the candidate can collaborate, listen to others, and resolve conflicts without emotions.
2. Adaptability.
What we ask: «Remember a time when you had to learn something new quickly.»
What we are looking for: willingness to quickly adapt to new conditions, learn, openness to change.
3. Communication.
What we ask: «Were there any situations where you misunderstood the instructions? How did you resolve it?»
What we are looking for: whether the candidate can speak clearly, clarify when not everything is clear, and ask the right questions.
4. Acceptance of feedback.
«Tell me about a time when you were given critical feedback.» What we’re looking for: Is the candidate able to draw conclusions and use feedback for development?
5. Problem solving.
What we ask: «Remember a situation when you faced a problem and didn’t know how to solve it.»
What we are looking for: the ability to think in steps, not to panic, to look for resources (Google, colleagues, mentor).
6. Self-organization.
What we ask: «How do you work on tasks when there are many at the same time?»
What we are looking for: Can the candidate plan time and prioritize?
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Olena Oleksienko, Chief of People Team at EVO
Soft skills are no less important to us than technical skills. It is soft skills that show whether a person can work effectively in a team and share our values.
During the interview, we ask candidates to provide examples from their own experience — situations when they had to adapt quickly, take responsibility, defend their opinion, or find a common solution. We also model typical work cases for us and discuss what approaches the candidate would use, how they would build communication and make decisions. This helps us better understand the level of emotional intelligence and interaction style. There are situations when we refuse technically strong specialists precisely because they do not match the culture and team values. We are confident that it is the soft skills match that is the foundation of long-term cooperation, and technical skills can be improved.
Svitlana Maidan, HRD Pingle Studio
For us, soft skills are critically important — they determine how well a candidate will be able to work effectively in a team and share our values. We have a clear list of skills that we pay attention to: communication (interpersonal skills), motivation, teamwork, adaptability and flexibility, and conflict management.
We test them through case questions that we select for a specific position. For example, we can ask the candidate to describe a situation when he had a disagreement with a colleague and how he managed to reach a joint decision. Such questions show not only a person’s behavior in a conflict, but also his ability to listen, negotiate, and think beyond the framework of his own point of view.
We also focus on the feedback of the manager with whom the candidate will work directly. After all, every team has its own dynamics, and it is important to find someone who will fit in not only professionally, but also culturally.
There have been cases where technically strong candidates didn’t pass the soft skills test. For example, when a person demonstrated an unwillingness to work in a team or openly disregarded other people’s ideas. For us, this is a signal: even the strongest specialist will not be able to be effective if he is not ready to cooperate.
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Tetyana Lobetska, Talent Recruitment Lead at Levi9 Ukraine
For Levi9, a candidate’s soft skills and values are not a «nice bonus,» but one of the key things, or as the meme goes, the ground, the base, the foundation. We won’t hire someone who has passed a technical interview perfectly if their values or interaction style don’t match the company’s culture.
At every stage of the interview, even at the technical stage, interviewers leave their impressions about soft skills. And these are always slightly different emphases: for example, a manager and a developer need different skills, as do a junior and a lead in the same role.
We spend the most time on «soft» skills during HR and management interviews. Here we usually talk about previous experience and ask situational questions that help us understand how the candidate behaves in real work situations, how he communicates, etc. But there are things that we always look at, regardless of the role: independence, proactivity, openness in communication, interest in the role and in his field of work.
Daryna Kuzmyk, Talent&Culture Lead at Railsware
Soft skills are just as important to us as hard skills and value alignment. At Railsware, we build on a «persona» — a portrait of RWNs — and a competency model that describes the required behavioral indicators. Depending on the role, we prioritize competencies, but the basic expectations remain the same: responsibility, proactivity, transparent communication, the ability to collaborate and learn.
To check, we conduct interviews and use various techniques. For example, we ask situational questions and listen to how a person describes their behavior in specific conditions; if the behavioral patterns do not cause reservations, we move on. In general, the candidate’s manner of communicating from the first contact with our company and how he/she perceives feedback at each stage says a lot about soft skills.
We had a good case that illustrates this. On the very first call, the candidate said that he didn’t talk to HR at all, saying, «they wouldn’t let him go any further.» He added that he wanted to talk to the CEO right away because he «usually doesn’t do well in technical interviews.»
But these are rather exceptions, so we assess soft skills using the following approaches:
Behavioral and Situational Interviews (STAR): please describe real cases and the train of thought: context → actions → result → conclusions.
Paired interview and half/full day collaboration: we look at interaction in «combat» conditions: how the candidate asks clarifying questions, agrees on priorities, divides work, gives/receives feedback.
Asynchronous communication: we assess the clarity of writing, structure, tone, and ability to capture decisions.
Feedback cycle: we give constructive feedback and observe the reaction: openness, non-defensiveness, willingness to adapt.
Signals from the first contact: punctuality, responsibility, quality of questions, ability to coordinate expectations.
It is worth noting that our greatest asset is our people. We spend a lot of time and resources to find «our people» — those with whom we share values, soft skills, and professional skills, and most importantly, those who want to build great products with us.
Victoria Tomchynska, IT Recruitment Director & Head of Talent Office, ZONE3000
Is it important for us? Yes, soft skills are no less valuable to us than hard skills. Every company, like a person, has its own character, its own DNA, so it is important for us to help our stakeholders find «their» specialists, to form teams that really work.
Hard skills are only part of success, the second, unfortunately, is often ignored by candidates, but the best employers fight for it — we are talking about soft skills. It is the match on soft skills that will show whether you «resonate» with the team. Here the words of Henry Ford come to mind: «Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.»
If it’s easier with hard skills — there is a set of questions and test tasks that allow you to identify them, then with soft skills — everything is much more complicated. The first impression of the candidate’s soft skills is formed by our recruiters, a full-fledged soft skills interview is already conducted by our People Partners during the technical interview.
We are not fans of tricky questions or case traps that are designed to trap or confuse the candidate. Our team uses a combination of behavioral and situational questions.
We ask about real situations: what achievements are they willing to share, what teams they worked in, how they reacted to failures and conflicts, etc. Such questions allow us to assess not only the level of critical thinking, communication skills, independence in decision-making, but also such traits as a sense of humor. After all, a good joke at the right moment is a real «social glue» for a team. Our experience shows that nothing is unattainable for a team that knows how to negotiate, cooperate, trust, and help each other.
Despite the situation on the labor market, the fight for talent continues. In today’s changing world, especially with the advent of AI, when knowledge of AWS or Kubernetes is no longer a guarantee of a place in the team, the ability to communicate without barriers, learn and adapt quickly, make decisions and take responsibility comes to the fore. Of course, this is not news to us for a long time, which is why soft skills interviews are not a formality, but a key part of our recruitment process.
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Olga Makarova, Manager of the Talent Search Department at ERAM Ukraine
Soft skills testing is, in fact, a test of a person’s basic adequacy in passing all stages of the interview. It may sound banal, but to pass successfully, you do not need any special knowledge and skills, you only need a basic level of socialization and a willingness to work. Among the tricky questions, in my opinion, was the question about who the candidate sees himself in five years. But we stopped asking it five years ago.
Interesting stories happen all the time. There was a vivid example when a candidate said that he couldn’t speak English in the morning because of COVID 19, and in general, he ended the interview quite quickly because the recruiter herself tired him out by trying to communicate in the same English.
Volodymyr Lobov, Talent Fulfilment Manager at Ciklum
Soft skills testing is one of the key stages of the selection process. It starts at the HR interview and continues during subsequent interviews, including with clients. We pay attention to communication style, listening skills, willingness to work in a cross-cultural environment, and respect for the team.
Each recruiter has their own developed approaches to assessing soft skills. Most often, an hour of live conversation, supplemented by situational questions, is enough. We often use the STAR formula (Situation — Task — Action — Result), which helps to get specific examples instead of generalized phrases like «I communicate well.»
The 360° questioning technique also works effectively. It allows you to not only assess how a candidate behaves in certain situations, but also see their attitude towards others.
For example: «What traits do you value in your colleagues and which ones do you find annoying?» or «How do you usually resolve conflicts in a team?» Such questions reveal how a person interacts with their environment, reacts to stress, and approaches problem solving.
We can reject even technically strong candidates if we notice the risks of toxic behavior, inattention, or unwillingness to listen to others. There have been cases when candidates were constantly distracted by text messages during the conversation or devoted a significant part of the interview to complaints about their previous company — and this is already a warning bell.
Some candidates underestimate the role of the recruiter and sometimes allow themselves to make unprofessional statements. For example, once a candidate directly said that he did not want to «waste time» on an interview and demanded to communicate with the client directly. Of course, after that we did not consider his candidacy: arrogance and disrespect are not qualities that we tolerate.
Fortunately, such cases are rare. Most of the time, our interviews are constructive, positive, and serve as a good start to further cooperation.
Anna Bodrukhina, Talent Acquisition Specialist Futurra Group
For us, soft skills are crucial in decision-making. I use the rule of «three questions per competency»: open-ended — to hear how the candidate formulates his/her thoughts; case-based — to see the reaction to the work situation; closed-ended — but in a way that there is no obvious «right» answer.
There have been cases where strong technical specialists have been rejected, for example, due to unwillingness to listen to others. This can destroy the atmosphere in the team, and in the long run such risks are more expensive than the lack of a certain technical skill.
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