Soft Skill Development: Thrive in Tech (and Life)
The Importance of Professional Skill Development
Whether you’ve just landed your dream job, are a fresh college graduate, or a 30-year industry veteran, you should never dismiss or the value of professional development.
Continual professional development is key to both career and personal growth and reaching your full potential. For example, if you’re looking to get ahead in moving from contract to full-time employment, developing skills is a great place to start. Professional development can be as rudimentary as staying up-to-date on industry trends, new technologies, and continuing education requirements, or as rigorous as learning a whole new set of skills set through workshops, boot camps and online educational programs.
When we think of typical professional development tactics, we think of learning new or improving existing hard skills; and while hard skills are the most traditional ones to hone, soft skills are just as critical and often harder to learn.
Hard Skills v. Soft Skills
It’s important to understand the difference between hard and soft skills and how soft skills are much more subjective. Think of hard skills as the skills that you explicitly list out on your resume. They are learned skills with quantifiable outcomes. For example, computer programming, graphic design, and project management.
Soft skills are essentially your “people skills”, and while some people are naturally gifted and blessed with incredible soft-skills, these skills can certainly be improved upon with practice.
Soft Skills for a Job in Tech
Over the years working with technology companies, helping them to identify and attain top talent for their organizations, we’ve noticed trends in terms of what soft skills are important for tech professionals to possess.
We’re going to cover 3 soft skills that we find essential to thriving in the tech industry (and all other areas to be truthful) and how you can develop them yourself.
Communication
Non-verbal, verbal, and written communication are all key in every industry but also in dealing with your family, friends and community at large. Different occupations may require more of one type of communication over another. For instance, an account manager will require more verbal communication skills than a software developer.
If you find yourself struggling with clear communication, don’t stress! There are ways to conquer this skillset.
Conquer the art of listening. Being a good listener is half the battle of being a strong communicator. There are two pieces to this. First, you need to listen to others deeply so your response will be thoughtful and meaningful. Really digest everything the other person is saying and how they are saying it so you can craft a strong response. Second, listen to people who you find to be expert communicators and learn from them. Seriously! Watch videos of speeches and take notes on their non-verbal and verbal habits. Do they emphasize certain words? Do they pause to collect their thoughts before attempting to express them? Once you find some trends, try and practice them yourself.
As for written communication, practice makes perfect but so does asking for honest feedback. We always suggest beginning with an outline. Take the time to plan out what you’re trying to communicate before typing and hitting “send” or “submit”. Next, you need to understand your audience. Are you writing to someone at the same knowledge-level as you or someone who knows little about what you’re trying to tell them? From there, be concise! Don’t fluff up your message with meaningless words and jargon. Find a way to get your point across in the least number of words as possible. Finally, proof-read and edit your message before sending!
Problem-Solving Skills
Wouldn’t it be great if we could solve all of our problems with ease? Just flip a switch and that problem vanishes forever? Well, life doesn’t always work like that, but there are some tried-and-true exercises that will help you shape up your problem-solving skills.
Adjust your mindset to focus on the solution and not the problem. Feed the positive outcome on the horizon and not the negativity of the problem in front of you.
Adapt the 5 Whys framework. The framework follows a question-and-answer sequence to get to the root of a problem.
Simplify things. Simplicity can often reveal a much more obvious solution than you originally thought. It seems to be human nature to make things more complicated than needed, but if you can zoom out and look at the bigger picture, you will often find an easy solution.
Collaboration
Being able to work effectively as part of a team is crucial to your success and the success of everyone around you. A team is made up of multiple collaborators all working toward a common goal. Here are some ways to become a better team member.
Being a good teammate begins with you. Hold yourself accountable, take responsibility for your success and short-comings. You will then hold yourself to a higher standard and get things that are expected of you done quicker and better.
Be supportive of everyone on your team. When your co-workers feel your support, they will be more willing to support you. This camaraderie will create a more positive and productive environment for everyone.
Listen and learn. “None of us is as smart as all of us” is a quote from Ken Blanchard that really drives this idea home. When you put the team first, you will put your judgements aside and receive as much from everyone else as you can give.
Conclusion
Don’t let your professional development fall to the wayside, and don’t be afraid of failing at a new skill. You should always be looking to build new skills and better yourself. While hard skills are more quantitative, soft skills can be learned too.
If Who Staffing can help you in any way with building a process that allows you to win the war on talent, please feel free to reach out to start a conversation or learn more information about us.
