iOS Interview Experience – 7 Essential Nontechnical Skills

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Have you ever had an iOS interview experience, never heard back and wondered what went wrong? In this article, we’d like to share some reasons why that might have happened.

For at least 7 years in a row, I’ve been an active part of the dev recruitment process in every company I work with. At the same time, I’ve been helping developers build up their technical and nontechnical skills to stand out in the job market. A typical reaction I noticed when developers don’t get the job is to ask “what’s wrong with my technical skills?” “Did I do something wrong in my coding test?” What they don’t know is that a lot of times, the nontechnical skills can be as critical as the technical ones.

iOS Interview: What are nontechnical skills?

Nontechnical or as also called “soft skills,” usually refers to a collection of social skills that can help the individual to interact effectively with others. In a professional environment, soft skills can relate to how one build and foster relationships with colleagues and customers, resolve conflicts, take responsibility, solve problems, and more.

After a rejection in an iOS Interview, I usually recommend developers to evaluate not just their technical skills, but also their soft skills. Here is a list of 7 soft skills employers are looking for, and you might need to improve:

1. Communication

Good communicators can:

  • Clearly and comprehensively pass their message

  • Comprehend and act efficiently on instructions

  • Explain complex issues in simple terms

  • Mediate meetings and conflicts

  • Be good leaders

  • Be good listeners

2. Teamwork

Good team players can:

  • Work together towards a common goal

  • Hold each other accountable

  • Provide honest and empathetic feedback

  • Help underperforming members step up to the team standards

  • Incentivize team collaboration

  • Be proud of collectively decisions and outcomes

  • Know when to be a leader

  • Know when to be a follower

3. Leadership

Good leaders can:

  • Build trust to achieve a prosperous collaboration inside (within the team) and outside (within the business)

  • Build a fearless environment where everyone contributes with ideas

  • Help the team members be focused on shared goals and priorities

  • Incentivize collaboration within the team

  • Enable the members to tackle and deal with controversial matters

  • Never resort to the “I’m the lead so do what I say” card

4. Responsibility

Professionals that hold themselves accountable can:

  • Accept responsibility for mistakes

  • Respect, comply and encourage high-quality standards

  • Be focused on continuous progress

  • Be humble

  • Be a constant learner

  • Strive to not to let other team members down

5. Conflict resolution

Good leaders can:

  • Find solutions that can benefit all parties

  • Establish a harmonious relationship with peers and clients

  • Seek commitment to decisions from all members, instead of consensus

  • Respectfully exerts influence

  • Tackle and deal with controversial matters

  • Respectfully address people’s misbehavior

  • Make everyone’s opinions heard and valued

6. Time management

Disciplined professionals can:

  • Get things done effectively

  • Simplify tasks

  • Clarify priorities

  • Limit work in progress

  • Estimate better

  • Think clearly under pressure

  • Delegate

  • Outperform and over deliver

7. Flexibility

Flexible professionals can:

  • Quickly respond to change (e.g. goals, expectations, resources)

  • Find creative to perform tasks more efficiently

  • Find ways to improve work/life balance in the team (e.g. flexible hours/work from home on snow days)

  • Help others and never say “That’s not my job.”

  • Cover for others on vacation or sick leave

  • Learn from constructive criticism

Why we should care

A healthy work environment depends on soft skills. In iOS Interviews, they not only search for technically talented developers but individuals that the team would be happy to work with.

Soft skills are valuable and scarce. Developers that build their soft skills will have a substantial advantage and in the job market. Also, soft skills can be essential to function and thrive in high-performance software teams.

Junior developers can benefit and accelerate their growth by building their soft skills early in their career. Mid-level to senior developers should be able to display good soft skills.

As the professional gets more experience, those soft skills are expected to improve as well. So, for example, it’s not uncommon to see senior developers applying to lead roles and getting rejected. Even though senior developers may have a strong technical background, they may not have other essential skills like good communication, teamwork, and leadership.

Bonus reasons (Out of our control)

Sometimes we prepared accordingly, had our technical and soft skills sharp, did everything right, but still didn’t hear back. When I’m on the interviewer side, I usually like to give feedback to all candidates. I don’t want to leave people “wondering,” and it doesn’t hurt to help them realize areas they can improve. Not every interviewer follow this principle, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Many other factors are out of our control. For example, they could have already hired another strong candidate, the budget for the role was suddenly not available anymore, we were overqualified (yes, that’s a real thing!).

It’s essential to be resilient against things out of our control on an iOS Interview. To endure and accelerate our career path, we should focus our energy on what we can control.

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