Bridge Insights

5 Essential Soft Skills Successful Quality Managers Have

Nov 14, 2019

For products and services, the quality assurance/approval process is pretty cut and dry: Either a product or process meets standards, or it doesn’t. Unfortunately, for many employers, finding an all-star candidate to fill their open Quality Manager position is rarely as simple as picking the person with the most extensive professional experience.

Although qualified Quality Managers should meet your posting’s requirements for software skills and ISO certifications, savvy hiring managers know this experience is just one of many boxes qualified applicants need to check.

When it comes to determining which potential hire would make the best Quality Manager for your business, an applicant’s soft skills can be just as good an indicator as their professional experiences.

Below are 5 soft skills to help you determine if your prospective hire is your ace in the hole.

1. Strong Management and Relationship Building Skills

Quality Managers need to have strong management skills –not only in managing people, but processes and projects as well. For a company to meet customer expectations, it is imperative the quality department is continually running efficiently and effectively. If your candidate is not able to be assertive and create working relationships at all levels of your organization including employees, upper management, and outside vendors, they will not be successful.

2. Lateral Thinking Skills with a Passion for Strategic Planning

Successful Quality Managers must be able to think abstractly and apply their insights to a situation with an end-goal in mind. Someone who thinks proactively and plans ahead will keep your Quality Department operating for the future as opposed to reacting to the past.
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3. Pragmatic and Results-Driven

Quality Managers deal with a lot of emotions daily from vendors, customers, and internal team members. They need to be able to separate themselves from the noise in order to develop and execute operational strategies based on data, and not emotion. An individual who is straight-forward and can keep the end-goal in mind at all times will quickly become an invaluable member of your team.

4. Analytical

It’s critical for a Quality Manager to have a strong eye for data analysis and trend reporting. When data is indicative of process and operational improvements, a Quality Manager’s analytical eye is necessary to effectively guide their team to look and recognize hidden or potential issues on their own, which allows your business to build on this upward trend of success.

5. Efficient Communication Skills

When it comes to quality assurance, conciseness is key. A Quality Manager needs to be able to effectively and explicitly communicate with members of their team –especially when it comes to giving direction to team members.

In Conclusion

Incorporating questions into your interview process that pertain to the soft skills mentioned above will provide insight into how candidates would approach the responsibilities of Quality Manager if and when they are offered the job. A candidate’s responses to these questions will indicate their potential for success much more effectively than a discussion around the experience laid out on their resume ever could.

Hiring a well-rounded Quality Manager to lead your business’ Quality Assurance initiatives will quickly set you apart from your competitors. An individual with the right set of soft skills in a Quality Assurance role will dramatically improve operational efficiencies, exceed production standards and goals, and much more –taking your business to the next level.

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