Hiring for Adaptability: A Major IT Challenge

Did you know that 69% of hiring managers say Adaptability is the most important soft skill they screen for? To stay competitive today, your company needs to be able to adapt to a changing economy and business needs. This means you also need to hire employees who can adapt as well.

So what does this mean for IT hiring? Adaptability is one of the most difficult challenges in the IT hiring process. Why? Because when you consider how positions in IT are evolving today, the role of IT employees increasingly requires the Adaptability soft skill. Adaptability is now required for multiple facets of the evolving IT position benchmark:

• Adaptability when using new technologies/applications
• Adaptability when moving up the management and leadership ladder
• Adaptability when dealing with peers or matrixed colleagues
• Adaptability when dealing with contractors
• Adaptability when interacting with internal users
• Adaptability when dealing with vendors
• Adaptability when working with outsourced functions
  
  

Given this list, it’s safe to say that Adaptability is required for almost every aspect of an IT professional’s responsibilities. However, often within IT, we just screen for the first bullet, Adaptability with evolving and new technologies/applications. That screen is ‘relatively’ easy since the topics to explore are more tangible, and the responses are more quantitative. Screening for the other Adaptability bullets in the interview process can be very difficult given the many potential layers of questions that need to be asked to arrive at tangible and credible responses.

Since an interview is typically an hour, you have little time to figure out if the person has the Adaptability qualities you are looking for in your next hire. The good news is that behavioral interview questions are a proven way to determine what someone will be like to work with more easily.

Here are the top 5 Adaptability questions to ask during your next IT candidate interview:

1. Tell me about a time when you were asked to do something you had never done before. How did you react?  What did you learn?

2. Describe a situation in which you embraced a new system, process, technology, or idea at work that was a major departure from the old way of doing things. 

3. Recall a time when you were assigned a task outside your job description. How did you handle the situation?  What was the outcome?

4. Tell me about the biggest change you have had to deal with. How did you adapt to that change?
   
   
5. Tell me about a time when you had to adjust to a colleague’s working style to complete a project to achieve your objectives.

Are you looking to build the IT department of the future? Download the IT Competency Checklist to help you determine if your IT Department is ready to perform at sustainable peak levels for all necessary business skills in your organization. We also invite you to schedule a complimentary assessment with a member of our team.