I look for a number of things in the people I have hired into this space.
- a minimum of 'ha' level of agile (google shu, ha, ri for agile adoption if you need more)
- technical hands-on experience - coding, automation, etc, but I'm tool and language agnostic
- learning personality - they take the initiative to constantly learn
- inquisitive and not looking to place blame - they can accept failure as a learning lesson
- they are a team player who can trust and be trusted since psychological safety is the number one success factor for high performing teams
- they can coach and mentor - they share their knowledge without being an a**hole - prima donnas have no place on high performing teams
- they have "enough" social skills since they need to be team members and communicate well
I have yet to find a perfect candidate, so it's always some type of trade-off. In today's world, I looked through 65+ resumes that were "pre-qualified" as candidates by agencies and HR, discarded 50 or more as not meeting my minimum requirements on paper, interviewed 15+, and hired 3. This process took me the better part of 9 months.