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Soft skills in high demand in a high-tech world

But they're more interested in titles than examining what a person has actually done and how it might be applicable to the role they need to fill. With too many applicants it may be the only way to narrow the group.

In today's extra lean business environment, critical thinking skills are more important than ever. The ability to determine the validity of the factual components of your assumptions, and the [more difficult] relative value of each is crucial to finding "more correct" solutions with less guidance, input or support. And it is, or at least WAS taught in college as a philosophy course for business majors called Critical Reasoning.

Hard skills might get you hired but soft skills will make you successful. As a project manager???s career develops she will naturally run larger projects. It???s on these large projects that political infighting, complex group dynamics, shifting goal posts, etc. become the norm. A successful project manager needs to be able to manage this environment but they often don???t have the skills to do so. Agile PM methods can help and offerings like PeoplePM (www.peoplepm.com) have developed to bridge the skills gap.

You touched on this with the "listening" skill but to take it one step farther I feel that empathy is a very important soft skill to have in IT. Being able to put yourself in someone elses place and understand where they are coming from can be very helpful in both team environments and in working with end users.

Proper networking is also a great skill to have. When networking you shouldn't just go in thinking what can I get from this person but rather thinking what can I do for this person. This allows you to build relationships and network credit that you can call on in the future to help.

Great article though and I strongly agree with the points.

College grads today have no idea of the value listening and critical thinking are to advancement. The best and the brightest are a bit too eager to demonstrate their newly learned talents at the risk of misunderstanding the challenge.
I know I did!
Learning to stay silent and really listen is on of the most valuable, difficult to acquire skills. Talk about self discipline!

TOTALLY rude, inconsiderate and annoying. I apparently am the only one that goes to meetings and I leave my cell phone at my desk--unless I am expecting a call due to a technical requirement and even then, I advise everyone that is why I brought MY work cell phone in the meeting with me.. Nothing more annoying than seeing a co-worker with 2 or 3 cell phones and "futzing" with all of them during a meeting...even more so when it is the person that called the meeting. Again, it is not only rude, incosiderate and annoying to the rest of us...its distracting.

In more intensive purposes of the statement, we need to rely on the knowledge of our team and learn from others, I agree. But the constant, and mundane shackles of real life are sometimes what is the thing that stops us in our tracks, and who is there to stop us...?

Why so dowe need to adjust our attitude, when our attitude is fine. Are we being adjusted so that someone else can feel better? In all intensive purposes, we are sometimes distant from the group, or tired, or distracted by something, but this does not mean we are having trouble coping with ourselves and managing our 'attitude'. There has to be an obvious answer to his article, and that is, "Self-motivation". With self-motivation, we can conquer anything that enters our path, and if everyone is doing this as a team, and being positive, than there is no way t hese people cannot excel together. And in today's day and age with ultra-high-speed computing and virtualization, there is really no limit to what one another can achieve together in IT.

We can be our own best friend or our own worst enemy. --j.p. strutthers 1789, St. Louis, Michigan

P.S. Softness is only as soft as our own true soft nature permits....

You do know it's "For all intents and purposes" or "To all intents and purposes" not "In all intensive purposes" - right? Just yesterday, I saw someone write that it's a "doggy dog" world... funny but scary...

Great article about essential skills. I wonder why some in IT and some senior hiring managers have traditionally devalued such essential skills so much that they have been labeled "soft".

It has been my experience that emotional intelligence in managers seems to be very highly valued by the people who report to them, but assumed to be something that is non-essential when an organization seeks to fill a management position.

Keeping productive people in an organization is not only morally right, it's essential to the bottom line.

"If you find yourself truly miserable and it persists for a long period of time, you might have a bad attitude."

Actually, if you find yourself truly miserable and it persists for a long period of time, it might be clinical depression...just saying.

Make use of those people who don't always agree with you, every now and then they are going to be right....

Healthy debate and disagreement can be a positive force. It's generally pretty clear when it's no longer healthy and needs to be addressed.

So, you'd rather your tech employees keep to themselves their ideas on how the product can be improved? When a worker or customer complains, they're saying, "This is not as good as it could be, and you should try to improve it in this way." That's valuable information.

Then, I see in the discussion, mention of what may be referred to as "professsional differences" or "artistic differences". They're unavoidable. Try to get everyone involved to list out the advantages and disadvantages of each methodology, each development alternative, etc., where these differences crop up. Keep communications channels open so that people don't invest a great deal of effort developing along a particular line, only to have it shot down.

Some of this is unavoidable. STEM workers tend to alternate between brain-storming and brick-wall discussions, and going off into our caves to focus and "get some work done". Sometimes, when you come back out of your cave with your shiny great new invention to proudly present it to everyone, you're bound to find out that all of that effort has been undermined in one way or another, and that, not only will he not receive great praise, but will be denigrated (more or less subtly). It's OK to grump and express your disappointment, and then get on with the next thing that needs to be done.

Actually, if you find yourself truly miserable and it persists for a long period of time, it's time to go where you're appreciated.

mivery, my recent favorite grammar-nazi peeve is "try and y" instead of "try to y". I've run across it in several novels and several programming books.

Mostly, I think this "soft skills" blather is either just a displacement mechanism or pretext trotted out by management not to give great STEM workers a raise. We're STEM workers; not ambassadors, not sales-clones, not politicians. Elephants have trunks, not claws; big cats have claws and teeth, not trunks. Learn to appreciate the diversity and complementary abilities and knowledge different kinds of people bring to the work-place.

My pet peeve is that people use slience as an answer. Does that mean Yes or No

It means they are either annoyed and dont want to talk to you any more or you made a point they cant "discuss" further or they want to say something but think better to keep thier thoughts to themselves (probably better that way for everyone) or what they have to say is hitting a wall and they just dont care to try any longer because it feels like a moot point...OR it is what it is and a yes or no is irrelevent.

In my position, silence is also used as an avoidance mechanism. Experience has been that should an individual speak up, whether partially or totally expressing alternative views, the individual may be without a job or banished to a less hospitable position. While this behavior should be frowned on, some individuals still practice it. Avoiding expressing alternative views with silence maintains the employees job, but also avoids progress for our customers.

Good observations but I'm a bit insulted by the inference that it is just an IT worker issue. Just by observing the News we can all see that it is NOT just an IT worker issue. A person with a bad attitude, poor listening skills, an inability to think critically and is not a team player is mostly judging others instead of evaluating themselves. There is plenty of evidence that non-IT workers dump their sins on IT workers whenever they get a chance. If they have a line to the gossip-mouth, innuendo and lies this is a frequent strategy of controlling people that are stronger.

So true...it is all over in all areas.

There are a number of soft skills we all need to enhance in our lives. I got involved in Toastmasters International about a year ago, to develop and enhance a number of soft skills... It is all about how to speak in public situations, not just public speaking...

It has been a great decision for me and my future.

I want to say I fully agree with you, in general, and the skills you mentioned separate the wheat from the chaff, but from what I've seen in this economy, it's all skill based. It's all about matching lines on your resume, with the job description. That's especially true when HR is doing the ground work on filtering resumes.

These skills will be in demand, long term, I believe.

Be careful in this dog eat dog world - I've spent a few years at UCSF and now under Operational Excellence (led by HR) the higher ups now weed out who they think are the best to keep onboard and sadly they are wrong. I've seen numerous good tech's get pushed out of there due to politics regardless of the skill set they are losing.