What Should I Teach?

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Soft Skill - Listen to enhance understanding.

Technical Skill - Ability to think and reason logically.

Most Important Soft Skill - Sales / Presentation

Most Important Technical Skill - Security (Broad Focus)

Teach your students how to look for a different career or how to be an expat..

An IT career is a dead end in the US.

The most important soft skill is listening. The most important technical skill is resourcefulness.

There are several others that deserve honorable mention like patience, good communication skills and maintaining composure.

soft skills --> project management

tech skills --> microsoft

you can also try to teach unix/linux basics - it's a hot area now - but who knows if it will be as hot in 3 to 5 years from now. there is a very good chance MS will still be making hot (not nessessarily the best products - but hot products - MS know how to sell!!) in 3 to 5 years from now.

It would be helpful for them to learn how to relate IT projects and needs to the business goals in order to get the funding and leeway needed to proceed with IT projects. Learning to write good project proposals and cost justifications is important in the current climate. It's sort of like sales...only selling internally to acheive desired results.

As for technical skills...I agree with the previous posters, but would add flexibility. No matter what the hot technology is today, it will be different tomorrow. Adaptability is key.

I'm glad to hear you're presenting the soft and "hard" side of skills acquisition...too many professors concentrate on one at the expense of the other, which sends the wrong message about managing a successful IT career.

Which, despite other posts to the contrary, is relatively easy to do here in the US. The reports of the demise of American IT are greatly, greatly exaggerated.

From a class of my own, taught at the Master's level but germane to your situation:

Technical skills: at present (a key distinction to make) focus on anything having to do with security, although this window of opportunity is closing. "Classic" technical skills that will continue to be in demand (although the specifics will continually evolve) are database design and development (especially in the sub-specialty of data warehousing) and statistical modeling, which requires a strong depth and breadth of knowledge of marketing and consumer behavior.

Soft skills (not necessarily in any order): resiliency (change or die), communication (oral and written), execution (ask questions that begin with "how" rather than "what"), anything having to do with project management and/or leadership, financial controls (basic accounting, at the very least), and methods for quantifying the strategic value of IT.

I'd also advise anyone seeking a successful, long term IT career to have a second sub-specialty in a non-technical area, like finance or marketing. Here, as in all things, the value of the whole is greater than the value of the sum of the parts, so one's ability to marry two different disciplines and provide added value as a result is part of what sets such a person apart.

Most important skill (regardless of category): ability to evolve and avoidance of comfort zones. All things change, IT especially (and especially fast). That old chestnut about the PC you buy being obsolete the minute you walk out the store applies to all of us. I'd tell your students to not look at their newly minted diploma as a ticket to a lifetime of professional employment...it's just the entry fee.

You should have a brief module relating to projects, methods, and planning to kick off your course. Not design modules, just a general life skills blurp before the course runs full swing. Get them in the mood for labs and critical thinking.

What kind of course is this? Software technologies, network engineer, programming, web-development? If you know the route that you want to go, please let us know so that we can be of more help.

If it is a networking course, then I recommend starting out with A+ and Network+ modules in order to establish a key understanding of the future topics. I would also recommend a brief "network mathematics" course at the beginning to teach binary, hex, and decimal theory, as well as subnetting with case examples. Don't drag them too much into VLSM and advanced methods, leave that for a CCNA module later on.

Dip into Linux with an introductory course. You can go a little deeper into Unix itself by playing around with OpenBSD, or something along those lines.

Soft skill - Salesmanship (as someone stated before)

Technical skill - understanding how coputers actually work.

I've seen too many techs who can't deal with a problem they have not seen before. They cannot relate one problem to another. I've been through cert classes (MS, Novell) and helped my son through others (CISCO, A+). More than 90% of what they teach you is less than 10% of what you will ever do. They fail to teach problem solving skills.

That would be a nice change from many of the new up and coming techs. To learn that it is always worth the time to do the job right the first time.

Try to make real life problems for them to solve. Too many classes teach functions but not how or why or when to apply them.

Most important for both soft and hard skills may be different in system administration, or development, or business analysis and QA. Problem solving skills would be important to all, but maybe not most important to all. Likewise for sales, etc. Take a look at http://www.mindtools.com for some ideas.

Seriously...I know the IT market in the US isn't that great, my trouble is lack of a 4 year degree -- I can't tell you guys how many times I've heard of someone or had it happen to be directly have the "door" shut on them/me because some employers still refuse to even use up any time to talk with you if you have no 4 year or greater degree. Mind you I have experience and certs and 2 AS degrees as well...still no go.

ANYWAY I got off the track...

Security is HOT HOT HOT, its seriously the one field I know for sure is in very much demand in the US IT industry. If you are great at security systems and networks, your changes of getting a decent - to good job in IT are still very good.

Also I think project management skills are big too for the modern IT pro, other things would include business sense (I don't know how else to word it sorry).

But IT pros today need to talk the business talk and understand it just as much as the tech talk.

CEO's and corporate types eat that stuff up with IT folk have business savvy and understanding.

Soft skill. Holistics, (boundaries, perceptions, thinking outside of the box etc.)
I did a course on it and it's very useful. Amazing how many IT professionals forget those annoying carbon based biological things that are about to make a complete failure out of their brilliant design.
Tech skills is hard one though, depends on how long before your students hit the streets ready for a job. Very little point in teaching them what's all the rage in the market if they're going to be two years out of date when they get the certification.
Based on my experience of academia, Iwould n't worry too much about the language. Pascal and smalltalk are hard to argue with from a purist's point of view. The market would suggest C and java, but if you are teaching development skills that's just the backdrop. If you can't program it doesn't really matter what language you can't program in does it. I was taught the essence of programmimg by writing down what keys I'd press on a calculator to achieve the sum of any three figures. Once you've mastered that bit the rest is just syntax. If your student's are going into commercial development, then take you standard every day programming course, find two exercises in it with an initial development and then an enhancement.
Get each student to do the first phase of both. At half of the way into the course give them the second part of one of exercises but with a starting point of another students work. Towards the end of it given them other but with their own starting point. At least then their first employer will have a chance of reading why they got it wrong.

What I was actually trying to say.....is... well, you said it better. :-)

Thanks!

Masterbation skills... This way you can beat management to it..

Communication - The ability to speak, write and communicate with your end user, management etc. Too many programs get written in a vacum or silo, with the attitude that I know what you need and I will give it to you, and you better love it. As the IT staff it is our job to learn how, why and what our end users do and need from a solution. Not the other way around.

The most important IT skill is knowing how to get out of trouble and cover your tracks ;o)

Seriously though, the biggest failing many IT pros have is lack of business knowledge. How on earth can a companies systems be maintained if the person looking after them doesnt understand the business or how it works. Which are the busines critical systems for the companies employees/customer? It's by no means the same systems an IT manager sees as important in many cases - for different reasons.

An IT pro should be there to provide a service for their front line/customer facing colleagues, and to keep the day to day business running with as little interuption as possible. Thats where the money comes from to pay their wages! In my experience it often isnt seen like this.

As in the past the manufacturing industry has migrated away from North America/Europe to Asia so the main bulk of the run-of-the-mill IT work is being done increasingly "off-shore". Many of your students will end up in liaison/supervising roles and so I think the main skills you need to teach are:-
communications - how to write and converse especially with those whose first language is not English and to take into account cultural differences
project management/monitoring
testing methods and importance of thorough checkout, acceptance procedures etc
sizing and estimating - not only for human activites and project costing but for eg database sizes, execution times etc.

Hope this helps.

IT, as a discipline in the modern day business world, has acquired a new paradigm shift where IT professionals are judged not by how much knowledge they have of the diverse applications but by how they can relate these solutions to the busniess problem at hand. Effective and efficient delivery of these solutions within budget is also of essence. The critical skills here therefore are business analysis & evaluation (assessing project viability) and end-to-end project delivery management.
Tim Ochanda

IT, as a discipline in the modern day business world, has acquired a new paradigm shift where IT professionals are judged not by how much knowledge they have of the diverse applications but by how they can relate these solutions to the busniess problem at hand. Effective and efficient delivery of these solutions within budget is also of essence. The critical skills here therefore are business analysis & evaluation (assessing project viability) and end-to-end project delivery management.
Tim Ochanda

If you have a job, the most valuable skill is troubleshooting ability. You need to be able to possess/collect information from a wide range of sources, analyze it, and pinpoint likely areas of conflict.

If you're looking for a job, the most valuable skill is writing your resume to highlight whatever technology is hot at the moment in the field you want to work in.

Too many job interviewers and screeners look for an exact number of years in an exact corner of a specific field. This is stupid for most positions, but it's what happens when people who don't know much about what they're doing have hiring or screening power.

One skill that is both soft and technical that you should try to pass on to your students is for them to enhance their people skills. I dare say that most I.T. people are pretty proficient in what they do, with various levels of talent. But one skill that is severely lacking in most technical persons I know is people skills. With a piece of equipment/software invariably you will work out what is wrong with it and fix it. People are not so easy to fix or understand. It is vitally important that you acquire the skill of dealing with people. They will be your customers, employers, employees and co-workers. Patience with those who depend on us to keep their systems running, for those who hate all things computer, for those who had a bad weekend and come to work and take it out on the poor PC and you the technical support. The ability to express and present yourself before others. The ability to just say no and enough is enough without being rude. Poeple skills are vitally important to technical persons. These things come naturally for some people but for most they don't. The same way you teach your students the technical stuff ( you will get plenty good advice for that here. These guys are great!) encourage them to go to similar classes that help enhance people skills (Dale Carnegie courses I can recommend). We will spend plenty money becoming qualified. Spend a little enhancing those people skills. They will differentiate you from the rest of the technical pack.

Too often IT thinks in terms of the inanimate objects of the network, but the network does not exist without people. The satisfaction of the "internal" customer" should be paramount. That is not to say that the "customer is always right". He/she is often wrong (internal & external customers), but they should not be made to feel that they are wrong. With proper people skills, empathy, teaching ability, patience, etc., IT will gain advocates rather than adversaries on their networks.

Student techs need to end up with a wide range of pratical skills for the hands on work, they should be able to recall what parts of a pc do what and how they generally connect. Information of web sites to go to when in need of advice or drivers should be given and collected by students. Every day during break, set a delibrate but small fault on a pc and send the students to find it and correct it. One of the things i find students forget is how work inside and how to plan their connections properly, eg ide channels etc. Students looking to go in to the technical enviroment these days will need to have a bit of server understanding even if its only the principles of DHCP DNS and AD. If possible to set up A nt4 or 2k domain for students to get an idea on then do so. Give your students as much of a range as possible as they will not all want to be in exactly the same area of it. Encourage individuality by setting assignments that are to work out budget based plan, design and builds - students who know most about IT will usually find more for their supposed budget and an range of equipent rather than the less knowledgeable systems who may spend more on individual components for unknown reason and have the basics for task. DS 23 UK

I think that in order to be successful now, someone contemplating a career in IT managment should consider learning about IT process management. THere are several reasons. We have traditionally been very good at the technical whiz-bang and innovation, but our technical focus on how we produce things has been lacking for some time. For example, work output that each IT process (e.g. like Change/Release Process) produces has an impact on the others. It is important to maximize the overall IT function through these processes. It will lead o simplification of work steps and produce a coordinated effort that will yield improvements to the corporation bottom line. The best way to manage IT organizations effectively and profitably is to understand the processes required to manage an IT shop. Then make sure your organization is following them using metrics. There are several frameworks out there to help like ITIL, CoBIT, CMMII, and others. I would suggest looking into these for certification, and ideas as to where you should focus next. - Larry Killingsworth, Manager Global IT Process Devlopment, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.

An IT professional must have the necessary customer service skills in order to effectively serve his or her user base.

For technical skills, one should always have a firm grasp on problem solving. Too many times there are so-called professionals that don't have basic problem solving skills. These are people that hurt us in the eyes of our users and coworkers.

1.) Fanatic customer service commitment
2.) Basic and strong fundamental understanding of TCP/IP.

I authored, The IT Career Builder's Toolkit (Cisco Press) - http://www.ciscopress.com - and discuss this issue in great detail. Additionally, I have sat on advisory boards for numerous colleges and technology training programs. It is an issue that is near and dear to my heart.

My book project started in a discussion forum similar to this. Post DotCom bust (2001) I wrote an article titled, Why Technologist Must Learn To Speak Business - published by Power Media Group.
http://www.cbtoolkit.com/consult/whytechnspeakbusiness.htm

In it, I identify three steps (and skills) that technology professionals can take to make their solutions more relevant. The resulting discussion and feedback from hundreds of technologists - identifying areas they struggled or felt unsure of - let to the Toolkit.

While some categorize this as a shift in the IT industry, it has always been my belief that careers in IT (as with virtually any industry) require a constant refinement and growth of numerous skills. The challenge for the IT professional is two-fold. One, the industry tends to draw highly technical individuals who enjoy getting lost in the technology and who, for that reason, tend to pull away from the soft (less defined) skills. Two, the pressure to be "on top of their game" often forces technology professionals to feel there is not enough time to focus on anything but the technical skills.

I understand the dilemma. I am a working consulting - currently developing an Access front-end to a SQL Server back-end for analysis and reporting. I also write scripts for server and desktop deployment and maintenance.

The fact is, however, that it can be done. In fact, technology professionals tend to learn better when they have the more holistic idea of how their technology work impacts the business they serve.

Additionally, there are key concepts in learning that can help people adopt new technologies without the time/stress involved. Part of this involves understanding and identifying similar or like elements of one technology to another. For instance, symantic differences aside, most programming is very similar in control constructs, base functionality, objects, classes, etc. - and when learning a new language rarely is one starting from scratch.

In any case, I believe technologists must define their learning needs - not based on their current technical deficit alone but on an assessment of their overall career skills - communication (written/verbal), project development, project management, technical, professional networks, etc..

Matthew Moran
The IT Career Builder's Toolkit
http://www.cbtoolkit.com

If you expect to come out of school and walk into a top-end Senior Analyst position advising the CEO - it's not going to happen. IF you're willing to take an entry-level postion, pay your dues, and work your way up, the opportunities are limited only by your ambition.

Hard Skill - Analytical thinking

Soft Skill - flexibility and adaptability

In all of my jobs, the primary reasons I was hired were my fault isolation (analytical) skills and the flexibility I learned while in the military.

If you can teach your students to reason through problems using existing knowledge and data, they have a good chance at getting good jobs. If you can also teach them to roll with the punches that life and work will throw at them, they will succeed at those jobs.

I have had an experience teaching IT in comunity college and have discovered that the body of knowledge is not pratical enough to let student become operational after their courses. The curiculum gives them just a theory based approach on IT subject and does not help students sustain their knowledge after finishing their classes.
The best approach (my view) should be focusing on small individual / groups projects that help students understand the why and how to apply their learning skills and give them a potential interest in the IT field later on.
For students to get a part time job while in school, a basic practical of learning theory would be a plus since entreprises do not spend time training the new comers.
What teaching??
General knowledge about IT management
Small IT project (basic desktops management)
small iT project (basic network management)
SDLC concepts
Human skills (meeting , communication and problem solving processes)
==>When the students are invested then they can get deep knowledge on specific matter like (programing, ecommerce, wireless etc)

For Soft Skills the new people need to learn Customer Service skills. The customer is not always right. How to present themselves to their customers. Documentation procedures and methods for the jobs they are doing (Project Management).

Technical Skills. I don't see basic skills being taught anymore. There are some IT Professionals who do not know what a command line is. Everyone is being taught Specific GUI's and Operating Systems. It doesn't matter what computer or operating system is used, they are all basically the same, except for the terminology and the amount of support available.

Computer Hardware is constantly changing - teach how to be flexble and attentive to new technologies. You never know when you'll need to be able to apply that new technology. VOIP is a good example at this time.

For Example: My daughter had a College Professor teaching her Basic Programming who did not know what a USB port was or how to use a USB Thumb Drive. The Professor only knew how to use an Iomega 100Mb Zip Drive. So, my daughter did not think too much of the class and considered it to be a waste of time and money.

Her perception of this Professor destroyed what should have been a good foundation for programming. That applies to the business world also. Their perception of your ability will make or break your career.

I've been a part-time Adjunct Professor at both the Undergrad and Masters level for several years. The thing my students appreciate most are my "real world" experiences from industry. Academia just does not prepare them for the business world.
For soft skills: The most important thing you can teach your students is how to THINK!
The ability to THINK a problem or assignment through to conclusion; to analyze and consider all aspects of the issue before taking action.
For hard skills: It depends on their career goals, but I would strongly recommend good business skills. The IT industry, with few exceptions, is still concerned with the "business of doing business". I have found over the past 30+ years in IT that a solid understanding of business concepts provides a definite advantage to your career.

I suspect that everyone would have there "pet answer" to this question and mostly I would suspect the answer depends upon the bias of the particular subject you are teaching.

My background is a follows:

After having trained in Telecoms and working as a maintenance engineer for over a decade, I obtained a qualification in computers and shortly afterward spent a few years teaching computer studies and related subjects in a college. I then took the opportunity to work in the IT industry and have since had a succession of jobs including network installation and maintenance, IT manager, software developer and currently my son and I run our own IT services company.

Like most people, I now have the benefit of hindsight and I sometimes look back and think that I wish I had had the experience I have now when I was teaching 10 years ago... I might have been able to give them greater clarification and a few more shortcuts to really understanding what my students would face in the "real world"

My "hindsight" list of essential skills for working in IT, based on my experience, are listed below:

1. Problem Solving - Nearly all IT work is Problem Solving in one form or another. Some people are naturally good problem solvers but most need to be taught how to methodically go through the "matrix of possibilities" in a logical sequence to narrow-down faults/problems. This applies to hardware, software, operating systems, networks and especially programming. Problem solving is a generalisation and some of the important aspects or components are listed in the subsequent points of this list.

2. Break it Down - Always break a problem down into small/simple parts and then tackle the most logical first. Any large task seems daunting, or even impossible at first. If we try to take it all on-board most of us will just go round in circles.

3. Overcoming "Where do I start?" - When confronted with a problem, learning a new skill, charged with writing a complex program/application. This is the point when many can start to panic if they can't see an instant solution... often a good place to start is by researching the task carefully and then putting point number 2 into practice.

4. The 80/20 Rule - Always keep in mind that in the majority of cases, 80% of the work can be accomplished in 20% of the time it would take to complete a task fully. Most employers or clients need to carefully assess whether the other 20% (very often detail and "nice to have" elements) is absolutely necessary if they are going to have to budget for an extra 4 times the initial cost just to produce the "bells and whistles" - Additionally, it can be wise to identify the first readily achievable 80% of any task so that you can stay ahead of the game, for the sake of your own self-confidence.

5. Be a Pessimist! - With IT, most of us know that if it can go wrong, it generally will go wrong - Always backup and check that your backups have actually been recorded on the backup media. - Never neglect firewalls, anti-virus protection, spyware and pop-up defence... Rebuilding PC's and Servers can take a lot of time. All honest IT professionals will admit to ignoring this one and have paid for it with time and stress!

6. Only make one change at a time to settings on a PC, piece of equipment, or item of software when trying to rectify a problem (back to the "matrix of possiblities") that way you can track the last thing that caused a nosedive or fixed the problem.

7. Always try to be Pleasant and Patient - Most IT professionals have to interact with users/colleagues/bosses. Try to remember what it was like when you were learning how to use a computer, software or, indeed develop any skill - It generally took time... and if someone was pleasant and patient with you, it made the whole experience more enjoyable!

8. Keep Proper Software Records... and make sure that your business or your employer has the correct licences for the software being used - It's a great feeling being able to sleep at night when the BSA writes and says it wants to come and help you audit your software - If there are any problems, employers who have pressured you into multiple use of licences, for economic reasons, suddenly try to blame you for not doing your job properly then plead ignorance and total IT illiteracy.

9. Thinking/Planning Time - Despite the pressure of your workload, you always need to allot yourself time to plan your day, week, project, solving of your problem... Don't allow yourself to tackle anything without being prepared mentally... If you do, it usually ends in tears!

These are just some of the practical points that I can think I would like to have explained to me if I was starting out again in IT... I suspect many of us could fill a whole technical reference with this sort of advice... given the time to do so.

Hope this is OK.

It may be a soft skill but an extremely important one. Troubleshooting and problem solving will make every technician more efficient and valuable. Also, make sure your teach "keep it simple."

Some of the most overlooked skills, and those which have helped me a great deal in the field:

* Research techniques - where/how to find answers
* Team Building - The whole is greater than the sum
* Customer Relations - Internal and external, listening and responding are critical
* Troubleshooting/Critical Thinking - I'm surprised at the number of folks that don't know where to begin troubleshooting a problem or implementing a project.
* Flexibility - Think outside the box

Soft Skills
Communications - every college student should be able to present, share, and listen to ideas. This is the basis for taking concepts, ideas or job assignments and turning them into well thought-out plans and long term objectives.

Technical Skills
There are several important areas two of which are knowledge of computer hardware and knowledge of industry architecture. A good knowledge of hardware will help develop troubleshooting skills. In addition, the industry is driven by several major players and it is good practice to develop skills in at least one or more of these areas if possible. It is important for an IT Pro to have a basic understanding of Active Directory or Novell NDS if applicable, networking/LAN, and communications/WAN.

I think the number one skill set to teach is good documentation (writing skills), analysis (communication, listening and understanding), and predicting outcomes (solution in production). This applies to any focus of IT, whether programming or supporting and bring in some of the great ideas of the other posts. It can help a new IT person look knowledgeable and experienced! For example, fully document and analyze the assignment or need and expected outcome BEFOREHAND. You need to have, or be given, the user's expected outcome, the skill sets of the users, other products or systems used, and HOW it will be used as well as the eventual expected outcome. How many times has thousands of dollars been wasted on a great development project, only to find out it's unuseable because of the end-user's skill sets, can't be deployed because of a technicl conflict, or - worst of all - management says it doesn't work because they didn't fully explain the need or simply expected a different outcome. It's our job to ask the questions! And... as far as final documentation, who hasn't gotten "bit" by doing a super job on something you're called on to come back and add to, months and months later, and you can't remember all the details of what you did and why!!

I believe the most important "soft" skill for IT professionals (and other "resident geeks") to have is to be approachable. We probably all know some technical person who talks at least a foot over everyone's head (whether deliberately or not) or makes his/her customers feel as if they are stupid and annoying. (I know, some customers ARE stupid and annoying, but even those deserve to be treated with some measure of respect, as long as they aren't downright abusive.)

Having been a boss in a past life, I know that if forced to choose between retaining a know-it-all or a congenial person--even if slightly-less-talented--the person who "plays well with others" would stay, every time.

Soft Skills
Interpersonal skills - big subject but in my experience, most successful IT people have been good at this and people 'stuck in a rut' haven't.
Learn how to learn - accept that, apart from some basic principles, technical skills will need to be almost continuously developed. Make learning new skills a skill in its own right.
Technical Skills
Offer specialisms - networking, software development as well as a fundamentals course that describes a generic computer/operating system/application environment.
Keep away from vendor specific skills. Whilst availability of vendor/product specific materials may seem attractive, they will need to be updated regularly and students will often find these skills out of date by the time they hit the job market.

Soft Skills
Interpersonal skills - big subject but in my experience, most successful IT people have been good at this and people 'stuck in a rut' haven't.
Learn how to learn - accept that, apart from some basic principles, technical skills will need to be almost continuously developed. Make learning new skills a skill in its own right.
Technical Skills
Offer specialisms - networking, software development as well as a fundamentals course that describes a generic computer/operating system/application environment.
Keep away from vendor specific skills. Whilst availability of vendor/product specific materials may seem attractive, they will need to be updated regularly and students will often find these skills out of date by the time they hit the job market.

Everyone has good ideas, though most assume you are teaching future IT professionals. Regardless of what level of experience you can assume in your students, they need to learn to read the instructions, navigate the index (hard or soft) understand the jargon, and where to go for answers if they don't, where to find information when they don't have the answer (such as TechRepublic), regardless of the hard content of your course. If the students can learn HOW to access and understand the relevant information, they will not be limited by the specific hardware or software they have been using at your college.

The acceptance that what is learnt in a course is not the end but the beginning of a learning curve that should never end. Some teaching professionals do not realize that they do not have to be god and be omniscient. It does not undermine your authority to acknowledge to your students that one person cannot know everything. On the other had, one hopes that you do know how to find out.

The other most important thing is to save regularly, regardless of what you are doing.

IMHO, the single most important soft skill is customer service. The most important technical skill is not so much any single piece of information or subject... but where to go to find information... how to do effective internet searches, finding appropriate reference materials.

The second most important technical skill is the 50/50 troubleshooting method/process of elimination wherein you divide a problem in half, determine which "side" the problem is on, divide that section in half, determine which "side" the problem is on... and so on until you get to where the problem is. For example, Is the problem Hardware or software, (we'll say it's software) Then, is the problem OS or Application (we'll say it's application) Then, is it a program issue or user error... and so on until you find the answer.

The following five suggestions are based on more that 40 years in the IT industry.

1. Stay flexible. Changes in the technology, paradigms and the buzz words of the latest guru will all impact on the perception of what a good system should contain and how it should be developed. A simple illustration would be all the languages that have burst forth and then faded. (Fortran, Algol, Lisp, Ada, Cobol, C, etc., etc.) Also, business (system) requirements change. A system is created to provide answers to a set of questions. Giving the answers will raise new questions that will want to be answered.

2. Remember who you are working for. The systems must meet the objectives of the business. (I don?t know of anyone who has made a living writing systems for themselves.) A good system will be tailored for the end user by being as simple to use and fool proof as possible. Provide clear options with extensive help in selecting the options and trap all possible errors. (How many headaches have been caused by the assumption that a message buffer was big enough for all possible messages?)

3. Realize there are different ways of looking at the same problem. Focusing solely on process analysis, data analysis, or event-transaction analysis to the exclusion of the others will produce different approaches to the same system. The What and Why of a system is much more important than the How, Where or When.

4. Work hard at being lazy. (The whole concept of object development.) Utilize concepts, techniques, and methods that have been developed before. Do the research on how others have displayed and manipulated the data and adopt the ones that meet the requirements.

5. Document the development. The first commandment of any developer should be ?Thou shall have pity on those that come after thee.? People change positions and companies very rapidly in today?s environment. Someone else will have to pick up where the person leaving has left off. From a selfish perspective, if you want to make a lasting impression, make sure what you have developed will last.

Good luck in getting these into a class that meets a few times a week for a few weeks.

Everything you teach now will be invalid within a few years if not a few months. Teaching them to learn new skills and giving them a desire to challenge themselves to keeping their skills current is most critical in this dynamic field.

As an educator and an employer, I look at my staff and know that those with a craving for knowledge are the ones who will be successful and those who are "along for the ride" are the ones who won't.

As others have mentioned, the soft skills are often more difficult to learn "on the job" than the technical skills are. The trick is that everyone from the Help Desk dispatcher, if a company happens to use one, through the Help Desk Manager are there to help keep the company running.

The people that you support need to be treated with respect, even if you don't feel they deserve it. The last thing anyone wants to hear from their boss is that they've had complaints about your attitude, etc. The trick there is to be able to manage expectations, communicate clearly, and be courtesy. You'd be amazed at what a hello in the morning or a check up email can do for relations with even the most hard to please customer.

The other thing to teach is basic troubleshooting. The MCSE/MCSA/Cisco/Novell certification tracks are for advanced troubleshooting techniques. If you're just starting out, familiarity with Windows and basic troubleshooting is more helpful.

Hope this helps.

After 20+ years in IT, here's my 2 cents.
Soft Skills: Listen to your customers, treat each user as the boss, BE PROFESSIONAL in your attitude.

Tech Skills: Learn to see problems in context. Diagnose the problem correctly and the solution becomes easy.

I also teach computer classes (networking) at a community college. Most importantly, regardless of the curriculum or certification desired, the most important to teach are hands-on, real-world applicable skills. Basic fundamentals and theory should be taught, but most of the theory can be digested from reading once the fundamentals are explained. It's the hands-on skills that students need to enter the IT world.

The other important skill, which is much more difficult to teach, is critical thinking/analyzing/troubleshooting, or whatever you want to call it. Rather than be spood fed everything, students need to be able to apply basic knowledge to think through and troubleshoot problems. This type of knowledge is, quite frankly, useful in any work environment, not just computers. But, I find many students do not have the ability or a well-developed ability to effectively analyze a problem and try to figure it out. The look to the instructor for the answer.

Here are the skills I use every day as a tech in no special order:
Prioritizing
Trouble-shooting
Documentation
Listening
Explaining (and I don't mean in geeky terminology either)
Training (users and other techs)
Helping
Presenting
Planning
Meeting
Researching
ALso you can never know everyting, but you can know where to find it. You can make someone feel stupid or you can learn something from them and become smart.

In order to be an asset to your organization you must be able to not only communicate with management but also clients. In short, no one wants a wiseguy working on their system. They prefer one that they can feel comfortable talking to about the issue that they are having to ensure that they don't make the same mistake twice.

Managers want someone to be able answer the biggest question of all; why? You should be able to explain in a manner that everyone on the management team will be able to understand. It is very important that you be able to convey exactly what you are talking about to everyone.

Documentation: Key in any organization without it you have no disaster recovery. Every IT personnel should document what they do as they do it. It may take more time but in the end it could be the difference between being employed or unemployed.

The business of IT is, in the very end, the business of making OTHER people's jobs easier.

It requires not only strong general-business skills, but the ability to get along with all sorts of people from bottom to top, the ability to empathize with users and see things from their perspective -- oh, yeah, and some technical skills, too -- and a sense of complete serendipity to reinvent yourself as the needs and the technologies change.

The days are over of the bearded, suspendered, sandaled charicature who doesn't speak humanoid. But this field is (was) exactly suited to the autistics and asperger'ses among us, and will always draw the extremely right-brained types -- to whom soft skills do not necessarily come naturally.

So, ITInstructor, don't let your young skulls leave your classroom thinking that technical competence is all they need. Look seriously at guiding them toward psychological skills as well. Since those are less likely to come easily for them, it's more important that they understand why and how to compensate. "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," "Leadership Out of the Box," and other books, courses, and self-learning of that breed is not wasted time.

Writing and language skills -- spelling, grammar, usage, writing in comprehensible sentences, explaining technicalese in non-technicalese -- are absolutely critical.

Speaking and/or public speaking doesn't hurt. Have you ever heard someone with rapidfire speech or very slow speech try to explain something to a novice user, or negotiate a contract? Not a pretty sight!

A dose of teaching skills can be useful, even if only some basic principals: say-show-say; showfast-showslow-doslow; things like that.

Negotiation skills can be handy, but make sure they're based on current relevant principles. "Getting to Yes" is a good primer.

Personal finance is always a good idea.

Planning and organizational skills. The principles of project management, especially learning to expect and manage the unknowns and even the unknown unknowns that creep into everything IT does.

After primary soft skills are well in hand if not yet mastered, a student will understand a little better why things like writing, speaking, business knowledge and MBA-speak are needed. In the meantime, technical skills have been coming along nicely because they're the easiest to learn.

As IT continues to mature, it is becoming (excuse me a minute while I put on my flack jacket) just like any other profession. Those who excel in it are those who are the most well-rounded in all aspects of their lives and educations.

The most important soft skills that people in IT need are an innate interest in learning new things throughout their working life, and the development of active listening. The latter unfortunately seems to becoming a rare skill, and is being replaced by increasing levels and depths of prejudice.

Regarding technical skills, it obviously depends on the needs of the student. But initially they should be encouraged to become as familiar as possible with PCs and the Internet, and then work out from there into their areas of special interest. Client/Server and web based IT are from a commercial point of view currently the most important areas of IT from a business point of view.

Regards,
Andy

The most important soft skill for IT personel are people skills. Being able to listen, understand what the persons requirements are, and then being able to put the solution in terms that the person can understand. The abilty to translate from tech to management is an extremely important and valuable skill.
On the tech side, be really good in a specific area, but have general knowledge of a large number of areas. Divide you energy accordingly. It takes a lot of energy to stay current in most areas of IT but you have to allow a little time and energy to explore other areas. You need expertise to get and stay hired, but you need a good general knowledge to allow yourself to move latterally as new needs and technology require.

No kidding - discounting IT Politics and Business politics in general, which is common with technical staff or seeing it as Evil will take nowhere.
Teach to use Politics to get Business folks to listen to the IT staffers. Make it your stratigic tool in helping business managers to understand the value of technology and its impact on running business.

First - TroubleShooting, Logical reasoning, Process of Elimination

Second - The ability to research the web for technical information

Technical knowledge of Computer systems goes without saying. That is an essential skill that you cannot do without. I would focus on the three key skills that can make an IT professional more successful than their peers: The ability to explain a technical issue to a non-technical person without talking down to them. The ability to learn new technology on the fly without taking training courses. And the ability to take an unsolvable problem and break it down into its solvable sub problems. I am not sure if that last skill can be taught, many peope just call it "the knack"

As one of my first IT managers said, "You can get a monkey and teach it how to change a keyboard or install an application, but you can't teach a monkey how to interact with people". From experience, they fire the folks without people skills first when downsizing.
Granted, you can't leave a void where the Tech side should be, but that can always be grown. The best recommendation for the Tech side is to expose them to the vast array of IT and inspire curiosity. That will both help them figure out what they like to do within IT (networking, programming, administration), and let them take the wheel of their career.

Yes geography plays a big role. I know someone who just started a new job after being unemployed for over 18 months. He wasn't willing to move.

I, along with two others in the IT group, manage a small network of about 200 PCs and 20 Servers and have done so for the last seven years. We do everything; programming, security, account management, performance monitoring, website management, you name it - yes, we're Jacks of all Trades. Recently, our company went out and had a survey done. Later, they called us in and explained to us that we aren't as valuable as those at the main office because we don't specialize in any one thing, thus unworthy to be classified as expert or professional in any one thing. Therefore, the IT personnel at the main office merit a higher salary (please note that they have apprx 90 people, we have three - a big difference, they can afford to specialize, we can't).

My point being....specialize and become expert in one, maybe two fields and you'll will be worth more to your company and thus merit a higher salary.

As for which field pays the higher salary, my experience tells me that programming pays higher than administering a network and definitely more than a hardware repair guy. Or, get a degree in IT management and bypass the lower levels of IT all to gether and start at the top.

As for soft skills, it's paramount that you have good communication skills, staying cool under stress, listening, patient, positive, kind, and happy. People will always call on a person with these qualities even if his skills are less than the others. In most instances, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. I know, it's corny, but it's true.

Teach technical organization skills; How to set priorities, crisis management and delegating tasks. 90% of IT is mundane and 10% is challanging. Teach how to handle this environment.

"If you don't know what you're doing, why are you doing it?" Technical Support question.

There are a lot of good ideas expressed here (and I haven't checked every one of them) but there is always more.

On the soft side, it is important to know that there is more than one valid way of thinking. Too many techs think that their logic process is the only correct way to think and that anyone who doesn't get what they say is stupid. I used to make my most outspoken techs read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" because they had not been exposed to alternate logic systems.

Once you believe that others are not stupid but just don't put things together like you do, it becomes possible to really listen to what they are saying. And then, you may find out what the problem with the equipment (or user) is. And how to explain it to them in a way they understand. And how to avoid offending them. It makes for a better workplace.

On the hardware side, problem isolation is paramount, as others have said. Intelligent reduction beats parts swapping almost every time. And, if parts swapping is used, there is a time to stop. I had some good techs convert one bad mainframe into two trashed mainframes because they kept moving a board that would blow the input circuit on the following board in the chain.

A little humility and recognition of where you went wrong goes a long way.

I was a tech once and didn't know any of the above, did some admin (where I learned it), and am teching again. I have better rapport with the clients than ever before.

I would have to say people skills. If you can't talk to a person and figure out what they want, how can you ever fix it. There is another tech guy here who has no communication skills, and he just makes things the way he thinks they should be. He should find out how the person wants it to be and make it work for them not for himself.
Always listen first.

I believe the three keys to a succesful IT employee are the ability to define a problem and systematically decide (Universal Steps for Decision Making is a good tool) on how to fix the problem, ability to collaborate with co-workers of various backgrounds and ethnicities and negotiation skills. If you can master these three areas, and have the people skills to be able to get things done, I would want you in my organization.

The IT field is vast with many possible career paths. I expect that a course from a community college would cover a few specific areas that would allow the gradaute to get a job and be useful right out of school. The areas you pick would depend on demand in your geographical area and also on your own expertise.

However, this focus on immediate employment has a long term draw back. One weakness I often see coming out of small schools is that the graduates end up stalled in their career because the training is so focused the students have a hard time moving beyond the narrow area of their training and often do not understnad or even realize that the IT area is much broader then what they get training for.

If time permits in your course beyond the core topics I think it would help your students to have some broader context to see how their specific skills fit into the broader IT picture. This will out them understand how they fit in with their first jobs and also to help plan their careers later on.

The first are I would cover is on the whole systems devleopment methodology. Provide the basic defintions starting from business process design through requirements, design, devleopment, testing , etc. This way the graduate will see how they will be part of a team where many things have to come together to produce a system.

The second topic I would cover is technical architecture. What are all the things that have to be in place for the both the desktop enivironemt and a systems development environment to be able to function? Basics that come to mind for topics to be covered are desktop, networks, file servers, the intratent/Internet, application servers, databse servers, development environments, and the mutlilayered security that ties it all togehter.

The last area I would cover is an over view of operational processes that are needed to tie everything together and make the whole IT shop work.

In all three areas keep the depth very light as to how much is covered on any topic. What we are looking at is to provide a highlevel road map. This will improve your students team work ability in a large organization, their problem solving skills by understanding the larger picture, and perhaps give them a bit of a survival blueprint if they end up being in a small or one person shop where there are not others around to teach them the larger picture.

Seems to me, as adjunct faculty teaching in IT, the most critical IT skills are a combination of soft and hard. Let me explain. Technical (hard) skills are in constant flux. They are changing all of the time as technology shifts. Expectation for a professional set of skills gets modified to meet these new requirements. Over a period of 5 years, hot technical skills become routine and transition from ?new wave? to routine and/or commodity. Thus identifying a specific hard skill or skill set is a never ending task providing little success or stability over the years.

Soft skills are also extremely important and change little. Training in how to communicate effectively, when to engage management in non-productive activities, and/or what types of situations require which motivational technique will always be worth learning. Training in these areas helps us to grow personally and professionally, thus they are lifelong learning. As such they do not generally, in my opinion, fall into the category of ?IT technical skills?.

Long term trends indicate, to those people watching, that technical skills will always be needed, but they will quickly become commodities to be moved out of a company - unless they are core competencies. This means to the university instructor that the best benefit to the student is to integrate ?hard and soft skills? if the focus is long term employability of the student rather than immediate and short term gain. (This was not clear from the question.)

Therefore, the student needs to understand the structures that require both types of learning ? a meta understanding of technology. A solid understanding of hard skills can be gained from taking and being competent in any number of hard skill areas: programming, system administration, network management, etc. These will form a base that can always be counted on to allow entry into technical discussions, even if the particular skill set is not known ? as a practitioner. (He or she understands the principles and precepts of the discussion.)

This leads to the actual course content. The most helpful, for long range employability, is a set of classes in systems analysis and product lifecycle management. Whatever the future technical management requirements, the techie who has a solid grasp on these skills will always stand out from the crowd and be a huge asset in any technical development or maintenance project. He or she can always pickup a techie course to update the skill base, update people skills, or even update product lifecycle management changes. But without the initial background there will be no stability upon which to build for the future.)

Working in IT for the last 10 years, I feel the most important skill bar none is ATTENTION TO DETAIL. Especially now with Sarbanes-Oxley and other reporting requirements.

If you need to take a shortcut, at least do it for a reason not just because it is easier on you right then.

There is a BIG difference between having to make do with what you have and just doing crappy work.