Communication Skills Survey

Believe it or not, poor communication can cost companies up to $10,000 per employee, per year. Your employees will waste more time, make more mistakes, and be less productive if you don’t optimize your communication best practices, technologies, and quality of hire. 

One way to improve your communication practices is to hire more candidates with strong communication skills, which you can do through a communication skill survey.

What Is a Communication Skills Survey?

A communication skills survey is a questionnaire assessment that you offer to candidates as part of the pre-hire or screening process. Communication skills survey include questions designed to assess or evaluate the communication skills, experiences, and capabilities of your candidates. 

Any role that requires working with other team members or using communication technologies will need candidates with solid communication skills. You can use communication skills surveys for several roles, including:

• Customer service
• Communications 
• Copywriting and marketing
• Leadership and managerial roles
• Sales positions
• Public relations specialist
• Assistants
• Social media managers
• Marketing managers

Example List of Communication Skills 

Communication involves a wide range of tasks, roles, and responsibilities, which can include several skills, experiences, and capabilities. Here’s a list of some of the most common skills to look out for in a communications role:

• Written communication skills (grammar, command of language, cogency)
• Listening and speaking skills
• Creating and giving presentations
• Sales skills
• Digital ads experience
• Interpersonal skills
• Public speaking skills
• Storytelling skills
• Nonverbal communication skills (body language, eye contact, etc.)
• Sign language 
• Foreign language skills
• Contextual communication skills 
• People skills
• Persuasive skills
• Confidence
• Friendliness
• Ability to provide feedback 
• Emotional intelligence

What Communication Skills to Hire For?

What communication skills you hire for will largely depend on what type of role you’re looking to fill. Below is a list of some of the most important communication skills you should be hiring for based on what kind of role you’re trying to fill. 

Customer service

Customer service representatives will be communicating and solving problems with customers, so they should have the following skill set in order to excel in their role:

• Experience with helpdesk software and other customer service technologies
• Experience with omnichannel communications
• Strong interpersonal skills
• Strong spoken and written communication skills
• Empathy and friendliness
• Patience
• Ability to deescalate difficult situations with angry customers
• Active listening skills
• Open-mindedness
• Time management

Copywriting/marketing

Copywriters and marketing professionals need to be able to come up with convincing and creative ways to communicate with customers. Strong persuasive skills, writing skills, narrative skills, and analytical skills are a must for many of these roles. Here’s what you should hire for from a copywriter/marketing professional:

• Writing skills
• Attention to detail
• Editorial skills
• Creativity and storytelling skills
• SEO experience
• Problem-solving skills
• Research skills
• People skills
• Graphic design/digital ads marketing
• Curiosity
• UX experience
• Versatility (long-form copy, short-form copy, digital ads, etc.)

Communications specialist

Communications specialists are jack-of-all-trades type roles within the greater umbrella that is communications. These individuals conduct research, manage email accounts, run social media accounts, handle public relations, and drive marketing efforts. Here are some skills you should be looking for in a communications specialist. 

• Corporate communications
• Email writing
• Marketing communications
• Communications technologies
• SEO
• Proofreading
• Writing skills
• Social media background
• Analytics
• Public relations skills
• Project management skills
• Multimedia skills

Communication Skills Assessment and Survey Question Template

There are a few ways to assess a candidate’s communication skills. You can use the following survey formats when assessing a candidate’s communication skills.

Agree/disagree questions

Number survey 

Provide a number to each statement from 1-5: 1) never, 2) rarely, 3) sometimes, 4) often, 5) always

_____ I ask questions to solve problems with others. 

_____ Eye contact and body language are just as important–if not more important–than what is being said in a conversation. 

_____ I expect people from other cultures to adapt to corporate American communication styles. 

_____ I try to keep myself updated with relevant communication technologies in my field. 

_____ If people don’t understand something, I would rather tell them what to do than help them better understand the problem. 

Final thoughts: Communication Skills Survey

One way to ensure you get candidates who score highly on your skills survey is to improve your ability to hire better candidates. Crosschq helps improve the kind of candidates you hire with cutting-edge sourcing and screening technologies, 360 reference checks, and quality of hire analytics that will help you correlate candidate skills with new-hire performance. 

Learn more about Crosschq’s proprietary technology and our radical “Q” (Quality of hire) Report insights today.