With up to 85% of career success being attributed to soft skills, it’s essential to develop the ability to communicate and connect with others. In addition to helping you attain all of your professional goals, soft skills can also help cultivate healthy personal relationships.

One of the biggest challenges with measuring soft skills is that they’re intangible, but this doesn’t mean they can’t be evaluated.

Let’s go over a few different ways you can evaluate your soft skills and important variables you should keep in mind during this process.

1. Personality and Cognitive Ability Tests

Personality tests are one of the most common ways to measure soft skills because they can help reveal strengths and areas of improvement.

This type of assessment is always a great starting point because it gives you a starting point. And, since they’re standardized, you can always use it as a benchmark, then take the personality soft skill test again to help track your progress.

In the same vein, cognitive ability tests can help assess your problem-solving, critical thinking, partial, abstract thinking, and logical thinking skills.

When paired with other measurement methods, a cognitive ability test can give you a more wholesome view of your soft skills.

2. Shadowing and Comparison

Only 35% of companies provide soft skill training, so developing these abilities is largely left to professionals. If your profession is conducive to this method, you can use the shadow and compare technique to not only measure your soft skills, but also improve them at the same time.

The shadow and comparison method consists of identifying colleagues with great soft skills and staying close to them in order to understand why they connect easily with others. It’s essential to approach your workmate and ask for their approval as this will allow you to ask questions after making observations you find interesting.

You should create your own rating scale, with the highest score being the standards of the person you’re shadowing. Include categories that you think help their soft skills, rate each one individually, and average them out to give that person a score.

Then, do the same for your own skills and work on closing the gap between the scores.

3. Judgment Assessments

A situational judgment assessment sometimes referred to as a judgment assessment test, is similar to a personality test. The difference is that this type of evaluation gives you hypothetical scenarios for situations you may encounter in the workplace.

Situational judgment assessments are often described as hands-on soft skill tests because they force you to think about situations and react to them in real time.

They are so effective they are often used in job interviews for high-stakes roles or professions that have access to sensitive data.

Like other tests, judgment assessments usually have their own scoring system, so you don’t have to take additional steps.

4. Peer-to-Peer Reviews

Peer-to-peer reviews are common in the scientific community, but this methodology can also be used to assess your soft skills.

It’s worth noting that this method works best when you:

• Understand all criticism is constructive;
• Choose a respected peer whose opinion you hold highly;
• Set categories and use a rating system, such as 1 to 10.

The process is simple: create a list of soft skills categories you want to assess, like active listening and body language. Each person has to rate the other participant’s skills on a scale from highest to lowest. Then, exchange feedback and discuss how to improve.

This method can be combined with the shadowing process also listed in this article.

5. Simulations and Role-Playing

If judgment assessments are hands-on soft skills tests, then simulations take this experience to a whole new level.

Simulations consist of replicating real-world challenges you may face. The difference between a judgment test and a simulation is that the former usually consists of a written or verbal questionnaire, while the latter may actually include other coworkers participating in the exercise.

Simulations are more revealing because they add a layer of reality, where you not only have to think about your answer but your reaction as a whole.

Granted, it’s most difficult to set up simulations without assistance, but this type of exercise may be easier to organize with the appropriate department in your workplace.

---

---

Important Variables While Measuring Soft Skills

There are many factors that can influence the assessments of your own skills, some of which are internal and others from external sources. When examining your skills, pay attention to:

• Context: Every situation is unique, but context tends to repeat itself, so pay close attention to your tendencies in specific situations;

• Cultural Factors: The world is more diverse than ever before, so also consider all cultural biases, including your own, and how they affect your reaction;

• Consistency: Skills are about consistency in any scenario, so keep an eye out for patterns and learn to weed out inconsistent interactions.

Adapting the Measuring Process to Your Profession

Working on your soft skills can help improve your experience at work, but it’s important to know which assessment methods work best for which professions.

As a general rule of thumb, trades and hands-on jobs are more suitable for shadowing and peer-to-peer reviews.

Careers that involve working in offices tend to be more suitable for personality tests and judgment assessments, although controlled simulations are also beneficial.

Which Soft Skills Are Easier to Measure?

There are dozens of soft skills that help you in a variety of professional settings, but some are undeniably easier to measure than others. This list includes:

• Time Management: Time management is measured by punctuality, ability to meet deadlines, and how tasks are prioritized, which makes it fairly straightforward.

• Communication: When assessing your communication skills, you should pay attention to your coherence, how well people understand you, and how challenging you find writing.

• Critical Thinking: Knowing what tools to utilize shows great critical thinking. If you can answer questions like “does a VPN slow down the internet?” you’ll likely be perceived as a great critical thinker.

• Teamwork: While teamwork involves at least one peer, it’s possible to access this skill at an individual level. Signs to look out for include the ability to share tasks and collaborate.

---

To Wrap Up

Measuring your soft skills is critical if you aim to improve them over time. By employing methods like personality tests, judgment assessments, shadowing, and other techniques listed above, you’ll be able to set a benchmark and measure your progress.

It’s also essential to understand the internal and external factors that can impact your assessment and focus on honing the universal skills that are shared and appreciated by most individuals.

---