I was on a panel where the first question that was asked of me was beyond the core skills that someone has what do I look for when interviewing someone as it relates to the soft skills or the intangibles? My answer came in four parts; 1) I look for an alignment of a person’s value and principles to the values of the company. Getting down to the true values that someone lives and works by can tell you much about the person, including even whether or not they consider their values and principles to be driving influences for them; 2) An attitude of achievement and winning. Work is about winning and battling the competition of the company and to achieve there must be an attitude and passion to win; 3) The ability to play well with others in the sandbox. This is the teamwork that we have been reading about the last few days. The ability to be a good team member and team player is essential; 4) And finally, the ability to communicate with others. Especially in a small company, or a start-up, if one can’t communicate what she/he is doing and do so in a way that others understand and want to follow or support, then it doesn’t matter how good they are at what they do, they wall fall short of their full potential. How do we describe these intangibles, other than call them intangibles that are hard to teach and sometimes very hard to discern and evaluate? Peter talks about some of these as “gifts” that come from a great variety of spiritual gifts, many which, have been defined for us in God’s Word. However, since God made us all and put us here on this earth to bring glory to Him, then we can look at all of our talents and skill as gifts from God that are to be put to work, for Him. In 1 Peter 4:10, we read; “…Manage them (gifts) well so that God’s generosity can flow through you.” Are we using our gifts today well enough? Are we using our gifts to the point that can feel that God’s generosity is being magnified and flowing from us? Consider today that the talents, the skills, the set of experiences that we have been given are the intangible gifts of God that we get to open each and every day and like we marvel and are excited about any new gift, we need to make the most of them, today and every day.

Reference: 1 Peter 4:10 (New Living Testament)