So exactly what soft skills is your potential employer looking for? The first one is teamwork. According to Sharon Florentine (2015), "Candidates who can work well with others and demonstrate effective teamwork will always have a career edge" (pg. 3). After having worked with a team on our project in this class, it's easy to see that teamwork is a soft skill that must be fine tuned and practiced. The second skill is decision-making. Employers will expect you to be independent and be able to make the best decisions possible on your own. Nobody wants to have to watch over employee's all the time and guide them through every decision. Employer's expect autonomous and productive workers. The third skill is communication. Communication is key, because in most job settings you will be around your team and co workers 8+ hours a day. It's vital that you are both able to get along as well as communicate efficiently and effectively to help finish tasks. As I have experienced in working with our group in this class, it can be hard to communicate effectively and efficiently while also juggling other responsibilities and priorities. The fourth skill is planning and prioritizing. Employers want someone who can manage different tasks and get them done as quickly and efficiently as possible by prioritizing and planning. The fifth skill is self-confidence, which is an important soft skill in all aspects of life. Someone who is confident in themselves is more likely to take calculated risks as well as take initiative to do things. Employers want someone who can do, not someone who 'maybe thinks that they might' be able to do!
So you have all these soft skills, but you also need technical skills because let's face it, you're in the tech field. The top 5 tech skills in today's day and age are: data security, big data, cloud computing, mobile computing, and project management. Today in the tech world big data, cloud computing, data security, and mobile computing are very big topics. Big companies are pushing new limits and working with both cloud and mobile computing as well as big data. If you can harness an understanding of big data and how to keep all this data secure as well as how to work with it on mobile or cloud platforms, then you are putting yourself ahead by a lot. Project management will always be a technical skill that employers look out for as it is vital to project success. According to an article on networkworld.com "Even more important is experience managing complex IT projects and delivering results on time and on or under budget". In technical fields especially, delivering working results on time is extremely important and being able to properly manage a project to achieve that is a vital skill when employers are deciding whether or not to hire you.
Decision-making is more complicated than solving mazes, but we can think of this maze as a metaphor for life.
I forgot to mention, but it's probably also important to have programming as a technical skill.
References:
Marsan, C. (2009, March 30). Top 10 technology skills. Retrieved November 9, 2015, from http://www.networkworld.com/article/2265132/email-services/top-10-technology- skills.html
Florentine, S. (2015, April 2). Top soft and technical skills that will get you hired. Retrieved November 9, 2015, from http://www.cio.com/article/2904751/careers-staffing/crucial- soft-and-technical-skills-for-a-competitive-it-job-market.html#slide1
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