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.
[Did you miss any of the InformationWeek Conference in Las Vegas last month? Don't worry: We have you covered. Check out what our speakers had to say and see tweets from the show. Let's keep the conversation going.]