As the skills gap widens, much has been said about employees lacking the hard skills and formal training to fill advanced industry positions. And while technical skills are important, there are certain intrinsic skills that may be even more critical. Many hiring managers now place more weight on so-called soft skills, such as listening and emotional intelligence, than technical know-how and real-world experience. And this shift is becoming more prevalent. A 2014 CareerBuilder survey revealed that 77 percent of employers seek candidates with desirable soft skills. Of these, 16 percent felt that these qualities were more crucial than hard skills. One potential reason for this is that hard skills are teachable. An employer can train an employee on a specific program, or teach a worker how to code in a different language; however, soft skills, for the most part, are part of a person’s nature. To put it a different way, potential employees have personal qualities, habits, attitudes, and temperaments that will ultimately determine how successful they will be at an organization, and it’s these soft skills that should be assessed first during the hiring process.