5 Soft Skills Every IT Pro Needs
When it comes to being a great employee, an IT professional can no longer sit in isolation. It's time to develop some soft people skills to help your career. Here's what one recruiter looks for when evaluating tech talent.
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Whether you are an IT professional or a hiring manager looking for tech talent, you know that soft skills are becoming an increasing part of the IT job.
Consumerization of technology has changed the demands of a company's customers, and those of the people who work in it and rely of IT for their jobs. In turn, this process has changed the nature of what it means to be an IT pro. In order to get a better handle on soft skills and what they mean for IT, InformationWeek spoke to Tom Gimbel, founder of the respected recruiter LaSalle Network, to talk about the changing IT department.
"If you have a company that doesn't have a lot of customer interface, if you're just a technology company, and you want to have a bunch of technology people who are all head down, that's fine," Gimbel said in an interview. "Does that still exist? Yes, it does, but it is rare. Most larger organizations have internal and external customer needs. And with more customer-facing IT you need soft skills and empathy."
He also pointed to the changes in IT services procurement as a major aspect of the change as well.
"So many IT pros find themselves between two groups now. You might be between [the] end-user and the vendor," said Gimbel. Or you might find yourself negotiating between two parts of the business with different tech needs that touch the same application. This requires IT pros to navigate toward the right solution between multiple stakeholders, and it means a certain amount of nontechnical skills.
One thing Gimbel suggests to managers goes against the grain of much of the current IT hiring practices.
"If you can get IT folks with a good liberal arts education you are ahead of the game," he said. "Technology has to work, but it also has to interact with people. It isn't about how the technologist interacts with the technology, but how the end-user does."
Basically, what Gimbel is getting at is a set of soft skills to get you through your new responsibilities. He suggested five in particular that he feels every hiring manager should look for, and that every IT pro should therefore try to cultivate. Check out the list and tell us what skills you think are most important to your success right now.
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The term is obviously broad in meaning, but Gimbel finds a very particular aspect most important. "You have to be sure what you are saying and what your staff is hearing is the same thing," Gimbel said. Imagine going into a meeting with a client to discuss requirements for a new application. The client lists his or her needs. The IT pro takes notes, and everyone leaves thinking they are on the same page, only to discover that they are not at all on the same page. It happens all the time in the enterprise. Gimbel has a simple but profound solution:
"We've been encouraging our customers to have a phone conversation with a [potential hire] where they tell the IT pro about a problem they have. And then they ask them to write an email back describing the problem and potential solutions."
According to Gimbel, communication skills have to be verbal, written, and even visual, so this is a great way of testing the individual's ability to convey ideas in multiple formats, and most importantly, to listen and return communication accurately.
Things aren't getting any slower in IT. We're all juggling multiple projects. Knowing how to handle distractions is a huge deal. Gimbel talked about the issue of getting a complaint at 3 p.m., when there is an urge by many to try to fix it by the end of the day. Yet management might have other priorities at that time. Can someone handle it? How do you find the right person for juggling priorities?
"If you could see someone's inbox, it would tell you a lot about them," Gimbel said. "It tells you how organized they are."
Multi-tasking is especially important in small teams, but no one can escape it.
"This one is really hard to measure," Gimbel said, "What we're really talking about is how to not get frustrated with the end-users." This all relates back to the problem IT pros have with being "between stakeholders." Navigating the competing needs of the business is one of the top issues with IT pros today.
You might be surprised by what Gimbel thinks about flexibility. While many would think it is about being able to do multiple jobs or look at things more than one way, Gimbel is thinking more about work habits. "I think of flexibility as more about where and when rather than the how," Gimbel said. "True technologists are creative. And they have to be in the zone to succeed. There's the idea of the coder who is working alone at 2 a.m." But what happens if you are a multinational passing work off through time zones? Or what if you need code right now, whether your developer is "in the mood" or not. Some workers are more or less capable of working under certain conditions and times. This needs to be taken into account with hiring.
Again, Gimbel has an idea of taking initiative that's different from what most people think of. Most people think it is about innovating or getting creative. But there's a time and place for innovation. "The most important thing they can do is do exactly what you are told to do, and then get creative. People think they are there to get creative too soon." Get creative too soon and, instead of learning from the process, you could just be getting in the way. Listen to your manager, follow the process, and then ask questions to get creative.
Gimbel suggests learning lessons such as, "If I would have done this, I would have gone faster. I thought about doing this, but I'm glad I didn't, because I'd have gone slower." Remember, the manager who told you exactly how to do something has learned some of these lessons before.
What do you think? Are these the skills you look for in your hires? Do you think you've got these skills? Do soft skills trump hard skills? Tell us in the comments.
What do you think? Are these the skills you look for in your hires? Do you think you've got these skills? Do soft skills trump hard skills? Tell us in the comments.
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