Looking for a job in the technology sector? You could be more qualified than you think. Read as we break down the concept of soft skills and why they’re essential to the future of IT.
What are soft skills?
Soft skills are personality-linked skills that are difficult to teach. Much of the time, they depend on things you enjoy doing and they enable you to amplify your hard skills in a unique way.
Hard skills are the technical competencies relevant to a job or industry. They’re objective, quantifiable, and usually gained through training or work experience. Can you build an application in Java, or not? If yes, that’s an easily proven hard skill that you have.
Why are soft skills important in IT?
Jag’s experience as a Business Relationship Manager (BRM) is a perfect example of soft skills in a technology environment. BRMs are technological ‘translators’; the link between business and product teams.
They must be able to understand the technological environment whilst speaking the ‘language’ of the business. This prevents roadblocks and keeps projects running smoothly.
Here’s a practical way to understand this. If I tell you a business wants to migrate their servers and it’s your job to explain this to higher-ups, what’s your natural first step?
- Someone with a mostly technical mindset will focus on the ‘How’. How will existing data, hardware, software, and network components be affected? What’s the roadmap?
- Someone using their soft skills will understand the ‘How’ but focus communications on the ‘Why’. What are the broader business impacts? What do key stakeholders need? Is resource planning across teams adequate?
I don’t know if I have soft skills. What should I do?
Everyone has soft skills. You might not know what yours are yet. In fact, graduates and early-careers entrants often overlook their soft skills. They’re unaware of the value in their behaviours.
What are the top soft skills for IT?
If you can identify any of the following soft skills and explain how you have them, you make yourself a competitive candidate.
Communication
Good written and verbal communication skills are the first port of call, but even more important is being able to change your communication style depending on audience.
The most common obstacle entry level candidates face is knowing how to communicate with senior level stakeholders.
The best advice I ever learned for communicating with higher-ups is, “They fly at a different altitude”. While your day to day is focused on the details of the job and producing, your managers and c-suite don’t need that level of information. Practice being succinct. Reverse engineer everything you communicate based on impact.
Organisation
This is a skill you may struggle to exemplify when asked about it. “How do you organise your workload?” Everyone organises themselves differently, but technology environments are fast-paced and dynamic. As such, you should show evidence of being able to prioritise, plan time effectively, and make changes to your schedule if an unexpected change rears its head.
Problem Solving, aka Empathy
If you’re asked to show evidence of problem-solving skills or analytical thinking, don’t fret! What you really need is empathy.
In the workplace – just as anywhere else – you use empathy to perceive and relate to the thoughts, experiences, and emotions of others. You’ll be able to understand a situation from multiple perspectives, considering the wider impact of a decision, and reacting with compassion.
This is the cornerstone of analytical thinking: being able to understand the impact of a decision from multiple perspectives and create a roadmap for the best way forward, whilst minimising interpersonal conflict.
You’ll notice all the above answers are far more open ended, leading into an obvious next problem that needs to be solved. This type of thinking sets off a chain reaction we can organise into an IF, THEN, SO statement.
This is a much more impactful response to a problem than simply saying ‘the server is down’ and focusing only on getting it back up. Including the business impact when responding to a problem attracts more attention.
In the long run, getting good at this could take you from a support desk role into Major Incident Management, Problem Management or Business Analysis roles.
Creative thinking
Although analytical thinking follows a logical path, it requires an ability to also think outside of the box when usual approaches don’t yield results.
Project Management
If you’ve had to organise yourself to meet deadlines, juggle multiple workloads at once, and reprioritise as plans change – you have project management skills. They can be honed, but it’s important to remember what you’re capable of already!
In the technology sector, anything from new investment to supplier issues can completely change the landscape of a project roadmap. If you’re able to roll with the punches and independently plan your work to meet new expectations – you’ll fit into a technology environment.
Curiosity and willingness to learn
Saving the best ‘til last! This is possibly the most important soft skill recruiters and employers are looking for in entry-level candidates. They know you won’t be the finished article; at this level, nobody is.
What stands out is a genuine interest in the industry and a desire to soak up information like a sponge.
Ways to show you’re curious and willing to learn:
- Talk about recent developments you’ve read about – add your opinion and thoughts.
- Are you in any sector/tech stack specific forums? Mention these and how you use them.
- Been to any events or conferences? Talk about those.
- Show your online portfolio of personal projects – Github for code, Dribbble or Behance for design, for example.
Why is willingness to learn so important?
In technology, there is no definitive ‘start point’ or linear career path. Many people believe that you need a mathematics or CS degree to enter tech, and after that it’s a straight line upwards in terms of seniority.
In fact, you may enter a support consultant, find yourself in customer success, move across into marketing, and find you enjoy design; transitioning into a more digital-focused UX consultant role.
Or you could enter as a junior developer, climb the ranks to senior, then realise you have a passion for infrastructure engineering and move into that space.
The IT learner landscape can be referred to as the ‘lattice ladder’ - rather than progressing directly upwards, you can move sideways, diagonally, back down or across. A willingness to learn means you remain open to non-linear opportunities that may arise throughout your career – and technology is just that; a non-linear field open to those with an agile learner mindset.
What should I know going into interviews?
Understand that what one organisation needs will differ from another, and even across teams. Good hiring managers are crafting a blend of soft and hard skills – like a football team, everyone has their own stats and place.
Just because you’re not offered a role doesn’t mean you're not competent: it could mean they already have a ‘you’ in the team and are looking to balance that out with someone slightly different. Keep searching and you will find a team that wants both your technical capabilities as well as your personality, life experience, and resulting soft skills.
Where can I learn more like this?
As part of our focus on encouraging Early Entry into tech and demystifying alternative routes into the industry, we've partnered with Jag Sohal. Jag is on a mission to help those in their early careers make a positive start in the IT profession. She's a myth buster keen to let people know that there’s many entry paths into IT and the profession offers a whole host of opportunity, impacting all sectors.
Watch: Essential Future Competencies in IT | BCS Birmingham Branch – Jag Sohal and Nathan Bignold
Connect: Find Jag on LinkedIn here
