3 Soft Skills to Seek In All Packaging Engineer Candidates
In the results-driven business world, human resources professionals may be tempted to undervalue soft skills, focusing on hard skills, or the technical expertise needed to get the job done.
That’s a mistake.
If you’ve ever worked with someone who lacks time management or communications ability — you know the importance of soft skills. These traits, called soft skills, can be hard to spot on a resume. They explain why some people are better communicators, problem-solvers or work better in teams. Having soft skills may be the difference between a stellar employee and one who just gets by.
Soft skills are important traits for packaging engineers, who develop packaging for a company’s products. While it’s crucial that packaging engineers be knowledgeable in technical subjects like chemistry, physics, materials science and engineering, the best candidates are ones who also have soft skills.
Here are three soft skills to look for in all packaging engineer candidates.
Communication Skills
The ability to communicate is essential for packaging engineers. They’ll interact on a daily basis with numerous people from inside the organization to outside, including marketers, product managers, manufacturing personnel, other engineers, and suppliers. They don’t need to be an award-winning writer or a world-class orator. But they must be able to express themselves with clear, concise written communication. They’ll need to be good listeners and ask the right questions. They also need to display confidence and authenticity when speaking with, and presenting to, others.
Problem Solving
Employees who have problem-solving skills are invaluable to employers because of their ability to analyze problems and come up with solutions. They have the patience and insight to step back and view a business problem from all perspectives and map out a path toward a solution.
Teamwork
We all know that people have different working styles. Teamwork is all about listening to others and respecting the way they work. If you’re a great team player, you can interpret and adapt to these styles. For today’s packaging engineer, teamwork is a fundamental necessity.
As these examples show, candidates in packaging engineering can have all the technical skills in the world, but if they can’t communicate with colleagues, get along well with others or solve problems, they won’t get far in their careers. That’s why soft skills have become an important consideration for companies in their recruitment efforts — especially for packaging engineers.
To get more advice about hiring, visit the Nesco Resource website.