So you are looking for a perfect developer for your company. You have a dozen candidates with almost identical tech skills and equal experience, and they all apply for a single opening. So what now? How do you choose the right person for your firm’s goals?
Well, the answer is simple – listen and observe. Since the candidates are equal in their technical knowledge, try to focus on each candidate’s ambition, ability to focus, sense of humor, and overall ease in conversation.
So, which soft skills for developers are worth checking before you hire? And how do you spot them? Here is your answer!
Soft skills for developers are the personal and people skills that decide how someone works, separate from the languages and tools they know. They cover communication, problem-solving, time management, and how a developer reacts to feedback and pressure.
In 2026, AI keeps taking on more of the actual coding, and that changes which skills make a developer worth hiring. When a tool can write the function, writing the function is no longer a valuable part. All that remains is the human touch, which, fortunately, AI does not yet have access to: emotional intelligence, teamwork, motivation, and curiosity.
In its Future of Jobs Report, the World Economic Forum ranks human skills at the top of employers’ needs. Analytical thinking comes first, then resilience, flexibility, leadership, and working with people. Technical skills like AI are growing the fastest, but they still rank below human ones on the list of what employers rely on most.
The report shows exactly how fast the workplace is shifting:
That reskilling is the heart of it. The specific tools change every few months, so the developers who win are the ones who keep learning. Employers have already noticed the trend, and they are actively hiring people who are flexible and pick up new tools on their own. The flip side is just as real: the developers who refuse to adapt are usually the first a company lets go.
To help you identify candidates who deliver long-term value, here is the standard checklist of 13 soft skills for developers we use during our pre-screening process.
The easiest and yet crucial skill on the list. Communication in the team, with stakeholders, clients, office crew, boss, and anyone else is a part of the developer’s job. Ease of clearly defining the idea, ability to find the right words during the interview, and general lightness of the conversation are what you need to check.
The real development work is taking a problem and breaking it into steps that lead to a solution. A strong developer knows when to resolve a bug alone and when to stop and ask for help. To check for it, hand the candidate a deliberately under-specified task and watch the questions they ask before they start. Good questions tell you more than a fast answer.
Nearly 75% of all employers rate this skill as “very important”. As the new blood in the existing team, a candidate should catch up with the current workflow, be able to properly present their point of view, stay respectful, and work together in route to the final goal. Someone approachable, helpful, open-minded, and available to your questions and the potential team is the right fit.
Sometimes a browser update corrupts the system functionality or an AppStore stops showing your app to the customers. Adaptability and proper prioritization of the work tasks are essential to keep up with the pace. The agility and agile framework would be a great benefit to a candidate’s CV.
Time is money. So if a candidate says a job can be done in 5 hours, there is no way they can afford to complete it in 7. The competence to clearly evaluate their own skill-set and calculate the time required to complete a task is crucial. To test for this, give them a simple task and request an ETA for the completion; then, see if they meet the deadlines.
This is a tough skill to check during the pre-screening, but something as simple as being on time is a part of accountability. If a dev is late for your meeting, be aware that this person might not take the job seriously or consider themselves accountable for the project.
For developers, proactivity is related to accountability, especially for the new team members. If a candidate sees an error in the code and is ready to fix it, that is proactivity: the will to take action and work for the common goal.
Feedback is a way of in-team communication. A good candidate should be able to accept and give feedback in the form of advice and not personal criticism. Constructive criticism is vital for the project’s success, so simply check how a potential employee reacts to the comments you make during the interview.
What if a candidate fails to understand the question? Cannot follow simple steps? Well, such developers are tough to work with in an agile and flexible team. Look for those who calmly react, hear the feedback, and do the job right the first time. Because who would want a dev who needs 10 reminders about a task, right?
Patience is the foundation of a developer’s work, whether in the search for a bug or communication with the stakeholders. A new project requires patience and time to be comprehended. A senior dev needs patience when explaining the project multiple times to a green junior. It is patience that can help with explaining complex notions of app development to non-tech clients.
To check for this, just ask the candidate some technical questions that you don’t know answers to and evaluate how much you were able to comprehend from their explanation.
The ability to eliminate distractions in order to concentrate is vital, especially while working with legacy code. Invent some distractions during the interview and check how well your potential developer focuses on the interview rather than the opening doors or the ringing phone.
Some developers stay level when a code review gets harsh or a deadline slips; others take it personally. That steadiness under pressure is what to look for, along with the ability to read how teammates are reacting. To get a sense of it, ask about a project that went badly and listen to how they tell the story. Reflection is a good sign. Blaming everyone else is not.
Nearly half of all employers rate this skill as core for their workforce. Tools evolve rapidly, and a developer who stopped learning three years ago won’t be able to hide it. It is curiosity that allows a person to stay up to date and adopt new technologies more quickly. Ask them what they’ve been learning lately and why it interests them. Their answer will reveal whether they take the initiative to learn on their own.
The development world is a fast-developing community of ever-changing technology and high-demanding clients that need to keep up with end-user demands. It requires flexibility, teamwork, accountability, and proactivity for the project’s success.
We have learned this the hard way at times, so now our HR department has vast knowledge and experience in finding the perfect set of soft skills for developers. Whether you need advice or are ready to experience the pleasure of working with a professional and communicative developer, write to us or contact us in any other way to make your team stronger!
Most of these can be learned. Communication, time management, giving feedback, and teamwork skills improve through practice and quality coaching. Some qualities, however, run deeper, such as genuine curiosity or basic empathy, and are much harder to instill in a person. That is why you should focus on these deeper qualities during the hiring process and plan to develop the rest of the skills on the job.
For a junior, the soft skills you most want to see are coachability and plain reliability, because the job is to learn quickly while staying dependable. For a senior, the weight shifts toward communicating with non-technical stakeholders, mentoring juniors, owning unclear decisions, and keeping the wider team aligned. Both need communication, but a senior should carry it across the whole team.
A brief sample of their work and a couple of questions about how they handle real-life situations will help you find out almost everything you need to know. Pay attention to how the candidate explains their thought process and how they react to a little pushback. A brief introductory call or a recorded response to one or two questions will allow you to assess the candidate’s communication skills early on, even before you decide to conduct a full interview cycle.
Not exactly. A resume lists technical skills and projects. Soft skills show up in how a person describes a problem, responds to feedback, handles disagreements, and works in a team. And you can only see these during the interview itself or when checking references. Think of the resume as a filter for assessing technical fit, and the interview as an opportunity to verify everything else.
