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