"Soft skills matter more than technical skills" and "technical skills are what actually get you hired" are both oversimplified, and the honest answer depends heavily on what stage of the hiring process you're in and what level the role is. Treating the two as competing priorities misses how they actually function together in a real hiring decision.

Technical skills are usually the filter, not the decider

For most roles with a specific technical requirement, technical skill acts as a threshold, not a ranking criterion — you either clear the bar needed to do the job, or you don't get considered further. Once several candidates clear that bar, the technical difference between them often matters less than it did to get them shortlisted in the first place, because the interview process shifts to differentiating among people who've already proven they can do the work.

Soft skills usually decide between similarly qualified candidates

This is where "soft skills matter more" actually comes from, and it's a specific, narrower claim than it's often presented as: once a slate of candidates all clear the technical bar, the deciding factor is frequently communication, collaboration signals, and how someone handled ambiguous or difficult interview questions — not who was technically strongest of the group. A hiring manager choosing between three technically qualified finalists is rarely choosing based on who's marginally more technically skilled; they're choosing based on who they trust to communicate clearly and work well with the team.

Where this breaks down: highly specialized or senior technical roles

For roles requiring deep, specific technical expertise — a narrow specialization, or a senior technical role where the work itself is the primary value — technical depth can remain the dominant factor even at the final stage, because the pool of people who clear the bar at all is small enough that technical differentiation still matters between finalists. The "soft skills win at the end" pattern is strongest for roles where many people can plausibly do the job well; it's weaker for roles where very few people can.

What this means for how you prepare

Don't neglect the technical bar assuming soft skills will carry you. If you can't clear the actual technical requirement, no amount of communication skill gets you past that stage — see our guide on preparing for technical interviews beyond coding questions for how technical assessment works beyond a narrow skills test.

Once you're in the room, assume you're being compared on communication as much as competence. Practicing how you explain your reasoning — not just whether you reach the right answer — matters disproportionately in later-stage interviews, because that's frequently what's actually being differentiated between similarly qualified finalists.

Ask what the process actually screens for, if you can. A recruiter or hiring manager will sometimes tell you directly whether the remaining stages are primarily technical assessment or more focused on team fit and communication — this is a fair, normal question to ask, and the answer changes how you should spend your prep time.

A practical way to think about it

Technical skill gets you into the finalist pool for most roles; communication and collaboration signals usually decide who gets picked out of that pool, except in highly specialized technical roles where the pool itself stays technically differentiated all the way through. Preparing for both — a real technical review of your skills, and deliberate practice explaining your reasoning clearly — covers both stages rather than betting entirely on one. Our Interview Prep Generator generates both technical and behavioral-style questions for exactly this reason; see also our guide on the skills gap between junior and senior roles, where this same technical-versus-judgment tension shows up again at the promotion stage, not just in hiring.