Skills-Based Hiring: Collaboration - ApplicantStack
The blog post from ApplicantStack emphasizes the importance of collaboration skills in skills-based hiring, defining collaboration as the ability to work effectively with others toward common goals through various soft skills, and highlights that such skills are essential across industries for teamwork, client interaction, and achieving company growth and innovation.
Skills-Based Hiring: Collaboration
Jan 7, 2026
Blog, HR and Recruiting Industry Information, Skills-Based Hiring
Next up in our series of posts on skills-based hiring, we’re tackling the topic of collaboration. In all industries, collaboration is a vital part of daily work. Let’s explore how to identify candidates who can work well with a team.
What Are Collaboration Skills?
Collaboration refers to the ability of multiple people to work together on a project or task in service of a common goal. In the workplace, a good collaborator employs a variety of other soft skills to engage with others on a project, which we’ll discuss in further detail below.
Why Look for Collaboration Skills When Hiring?
People who work for a company with multiple employees will need to cooperate with others every day. Interactions among employees may range from in-person meetings, video calls, task requests and follow-ups, working close together, brainstorming ideas, and requesting feedback. Their job responsibilities may be public-facing, interacting with current or potential clients or customers, running public events, or resolving customer service concerns.
In each of those scenarios and many more, representing the company well requires collaboration skills. Moving towards shared goals, future growth, and innovative ideas demands company leaders and employees who can collaborate. Each person brings their individual talents and skills to a task, and the result is greater than what each person could do alone.
Common Collaboration Skills
Good collaboration results from the development of several other soft skills, including:
Empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand another person’s experiences based on their frame of reference rather than your own. Showing empathy in the workplace means a person will consider a colleague’s life outside of work, their upbringing, their education, or prior job experiences to understand how they approach work tasks and communication. It can help people remain calm in tense situations and appreciate someone’s contributions in a new way.
Open-mindedness
Open-mindedness is the ability to approach others’ ideas with genuine interest and curiosity. It allows people to escape rigid thinking and the certainty that their ideas are the only path forward. This collaborative skill allows all members of a team to offer input. It eschews following the most dominant participant and values all possible ideas.
Adaptability
The workplace is an ever-evolving entity, responding to economic, technological, and other external forces. An adaptable person can accept change as a necessity and adapt their work to the new paradigm. Adaptability promotes a flexible attitude to new responsibilities or tasks in response to changing personnel or project scope without causing problems for management or HR.
Problem solving
Problem-solving skills are demonstrated by innovative thinking, creativity, and brainstorming ideas to devise solutions to problems. As projects move forward, problems arise, requiring quick thinking and a positive attitude toward developing resolutions.
Active listening
Active listening is the ability to focus completely on a speaker to understand what they’re saying. It’s achieved by using attentive body language, avoiding distractions, interrupting, and observing the speaker’s body language to understand intent. Active listeners repeat phrases back for clarity, ask open-ended questions, and demonstrate interest in the speaker. Someone may describe a good active listener as “good at communicating” because it fosters trust, limits misunderstandings, and allows for conflict resolutions before they escalate.
Tips to Identify Collaboration Skills in Job Candidates
When using a skills-based hiring approach, you can use the interview process to observe the candidate’s collaborative skills.
1. Ask questions about prior work experience with others. For example:
- “Describe a time when you worked successfully with a team.”
- “How do you handle conflict when working with a team?”
- “Can you describe a time you collaborated with someone outside your department?”
2. Listen for collaborative language in the candidate’s answers:
- How often do they use “I” or “we” when discussing past work?
- When describing conflict resolution, listen for a balance of standing behind their idea and compromising with others.
- Listen for the type of team they worked with previously (flat vs. hierarchy) to determine if their experience/preference will fit with your organization.
- Assess the importance of their position in seeing the project to completion: did they have a leadership or supporting role?
Supporting Skill Development in the Workplace
Some promising candidates may show strength in other areas, which invites opportunities for further skill development once they’re hired. Workplace training for the soft skills that contribute to a collaborative environment can benefit new and existing employees. Investing in creative and innovative skill development boosts positive company culture and increases retention rates.
Explore additional skills-based hiring posts:
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