Top 5 Soft Skills that Really Matter in Early and Growth Stage Hiring

After talking to over 100 leaders—from recruiters and hiring managers to CEOs—across industries like software, finance, government, retail, marketing, and healthcare, one truth stood out: the best employees aren’t defined by their technical skills alone.

In today’s market, where there are more applicants than roles, what truly separates those who thrive isn’t how much they know on day one, it’s who they are. The teams that outperform others aren’t just technically sharp, they’re full of people with the right character traits that sustain momentum in times of pressure.

Here are the top five we heard again and again:

1. Strategic Thinking

The best employees don’t just execute; they anticipate. Strategic thinkers can zoom out to understand context, prioritize what matters, and make decisions that move the team forward. They can make decisions that affect the right now and the future of a company.

2. Loyalty

Many hiring teams look at how long someone has spent at a previous company as a measure of loyalty. Although tenure is a signal, it does not show someone's underlying commitment and ownership of the products they're working on. For a growing company, even a short-term contractor needs a deeper level of commitment and loyalty through taking pride in the mission, team, and the work they do for your company.

3. Kindness

Kindness goes far beyond professionalism. It shapes how teams communicate, train others, and give or receive feedback. In every high-performing team we studied, kindness, which was sometimes labeled mutual respect or simply "a good person" was consistently mentioned. With so many t-shows and movies showing an office character that is mean, rude, or prejudiced, Kindness quality is core to growing culture.

4. Willingness to Learn

In fast-moving environments, skills have to grow and stretch at an even faster speed. What endures is curiosity and adaptability. The best hires treat learning as part of the job description. We have a value that we refer to almost daily at The Dev Difference, ‘Figure it out’. This captures the need to learn, grow, adapt, evolve, and problem solve constantly.

5. Integrity

A team has to be built on trust, and there is no trust without integrity. With so many candidates now simply reading off an LLM to answer simple "What makes you want to work here" questions in the interview, how would anyone trust those candidates with key data and trade secrets of a company? Even beyond the interview, integrity is owning mistakes, being transparent about what you don’t know, and being honest about when you've used outside sources. It makes you a more influential employee.

If you're seeing flags of a lack of integrity in the interview, run. (That may be a note for life, not just hiring.)

Putting These into Action

Hiring is not a light and easy job. The wrong person can be poisonous for a growing company. Team leaders should pay close attention to these skills and how they show up in the candidates you speak with.

In a world where AI can automate everyday task, hiring for character is become the ultimate competitive advantage.

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This article was written by Jovanay Carter, Co-Founder and CEO of the The Dev Difference. Subscribe to thedevdifference.com's newsletter for holistic hiring assessments and tech-industry hiring topics.