Imagine you’re a developer who focused on tech skills throughout your whole education. Wouldn’t you hate it if companies required soft skills in job ads instead?
Technology companies highlight the value of soft skills more and more.
That’s not a huge surprise — unlike technical knowledge, soft skills don’t get outdated, and they help teams adjust, develop and communicate better.
But how can we expect tech people to have this skill set when the universities teach them only the technology and nothing else?
Communication, constructive debate and healthy confidence are not things you can read and learn from a book. They are often not as logical and easy to understand as programming languages. If you want to learn these skills, you have to acquire them through experience.
What were you taught about communication and teamwork at school?
My experience (if I exclude my drama education) is a couple of group projects where nobody guided us through the process, and they only evaluated the final product/presentation. But the process is the only part that teaches you about communication and cooperation. Yet, it was left unnoticed, unguided, and entirely up to us.
What was the result then?
The communicative people put themselves forward and grew in confidence. The less communicative people backed away and learned nothing but instead became even more invisible.
If we want to teach people how to communicate and cooperate, we have to focus on the experience of the process, not the outcome.
If you’re an employer asking for soft skills, you should be ready to:
- guide your people through the process of developing soft skills,
- help them understand and experience the basis of healthy, open communication,
- create a safe environment for discussion,
- make them realize you appreciate their input.
If you’re not ready for that, you are not in a position to ask for soft skills in your job adverts.
The topic of how to support such an environment is a subject for another article so let me stop here for now and ask you about your experience:
How did you acquire your soft skills?
Would you like your company to support them?
Is your company doing anything to create an atmosphere of cooperation and appreciation?
If yes, what is it?
Pavla
CEO of TIMEPRESS / Open for your feedback on Linkedin
About TIMEPRESS
- We believe that custom-tailored software, if well done, is an investment, not a cost.
- Our solutions shape the everyday reality of thousands of employees, to make their life easier.
- Our job is to figure out the most effective way to help you, and to come up with a solution. After all, we’re your automation specialists, just a call away.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us here.
