Yesterday I was given a large spiral document entitled: Building a Foundation for Tomorrow – Skills Standards for Information Technology; a very long title for a very big book.

The point I want to make in this post is that there is nothing new under the sun.  Solomon really did know what he was talking about in Ecclesiastes.

This report was written in 1997 by the NorthWest Center for Emerging Technologies, Regional Advanced Technology Education Consortium, and Bellevue Community College to determine the skills sets needed for information technology professionals.  The data was collected from over 200 industry professionals. This report was written for one industry but the skills they determined useful for this industry are nearly the same skills other reports deem important for every industry.

The skills they deem as important, back in 1997, for information technology professionals were:

Foundation Skills

Basic skills (reading, writing, arithmetic, etc.)

Thinking Skills

Personal Qualities

Workplace Competencies

Effective workers can productively use:

Resources

Interpersonal Skills

Information

Systems

Technology

Would you agree that these skills are very important in 2006?  We may have different names for these skills today but you get the idea.

This report was issued nearly 10 years ago but the information still holds true.  Even though we have experienced great change in our world since 1997 people are still the same.  We still need people to work in our companies who have strong foundational skills in order to succeed.  You cannot be successful without a good foundation.  The technical skills, the workplace skills can be learned but it is hard to teach someone strong foundational skills.

The old saying still holds true: the more things change, the more they stay the same

Allegheny College in Meadville, PA chose to host an event I have been running at the Pittsburgh Technology Council for several years called Education Meets Industry. Essentially the school agrees to host an event where a panel of industry professionals come to speak to their students about careers. After a moderated panel discussion about career choices, career advices, we have a time of networking with the students and the company representatives. The networking piece is where the real magic happens. Students often find themselves making connections for internships or full time work after they graduate. We cannot put a price tag on how valuable these types of events really are.

On this particular night we had representatives from Vivsimo, Management Science Associates, Bayer, and Reed Smith. Company representatives spoke to questions that covered issues like:

Resume writing
Cover letters
How to get an internship
The real story about finding a job online
The hiring process at their company
The IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION SKILLS (I cannot tell you how many times they emphasized this skill)
The power of personal networking when looking for a job
Relocation
Salaries
Etc…

As you can see we covered a wide variety of topics during the Q&A and even more during the networking session.

I took a few photos during the panel discussion from my perch at the moderator’s podium. What else was I going to do while they answered questions?

Thanks to Jim Fitch for all of his hard work in pulling this together.

I want to thank Carrie at Penn State Shenango for bringing me into speak the other night to one of their Information Sciences Classes.

Penn State Shenango in Sharon, PA; about an hour and a half north of Pittsburgh or about an hour from where I grew up in Oil City, Pennsylvania.

I was there to speak on behalf of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, where I work full time. The focus of my talk was on the technology industry around Pittsburgh and general career advice for students looking to enter the technology field.
Here are a couple of highlights.

If you are looking to get into information technology, advanced manufacturing, life sciences, or any technical field in general make sure you have your technical skills mastered. However, make sure you don’t forget the soft skills. When I say soft skills I mean skills that are just as important as technical skills: public speaking, communication, writing, speaking, phone etiquette, listening, and many more.

Many technology workers, especially programmers think they won’t have to interact with very many of their co-workers since they are the technology people. Therefore they don’t concentrate much on their social skills. Every technology recruiter I have spoken with who is looking to hire someone has emphasized how important communication skills and soft skills are. In fact some have even gone as far to say they are more important. The fact of the matter is you can be trained how to be a better engineer, programmer or scientist, but it is hard to teach someone how to communicate better and how to write more effectively. This type of training will take years.

The one example from my own life I can think of is when I first started working at the Tech Council my writing skills were awful. Even with a book out some still might say that. My boss at the time politely laid a brochure on my desk for a business writing class. I had had business writing classes before but in her polite opinon not much of the information had stayed with me. She said the company would pay for me to attend this class, so I went. After I thought about it I realized that she was trying to help me improve my communication skills but in a discrete and polite fashion. I am really glad she did not come out and say,

“Justin your writing skills are horrible. Why don’t you take this class to see if they can help do anything to help you?”

Over time any many, many classes, I feel I have improved my writing skills a little bit. However, I will say that I needed a ton of editing on the manuscript for my book. It would have been awful without it.

A couple of suggestions on how to improve your soft skills:

1. Take a speech class (I recommend Toastmaster or Dale Carnegie)
2. Write more; specifically write about how you feel – work, personal life, etc…
3. Ask your friends or family members how you are when it comes to communication. Take their criticism seriously and don’t fluff it off. If you do, that should tell you a lot about how your are when it comes to communication.
4. Read or listen to books about personal communication and listening
5. Make a conscious effort to improve your communication skills by a certain date and then put together a plan to do so. If you don’t know how to do this, seek out some help from someone who you know is a great communicator.

In closing, I am really glad Jane had enough courage to kindly tell me to improve my communication skills because they really needed it. I am a better writer and speaker because of it.