While technical skills are highly emphasized in the IT industry, soft skills are no less important. It’s essential to constantly update your knowledge of the latest coding practices, programming languages, and IT innovations. Similarly, you must have the range of soft skills required in your IT specialty.
The key to IT career growth is not emphasizing technical skills at the expense of soft skills or vice versa. Instead, it is a fine balance of both that is bound to elevate your standing in your IT niche.
Assess your current skillset
The first step to achieving the perfect skills balance to grow your career is assessing your strengths and weaknesses in each area. This way, you can know which area you need to work on.
To understand your full range, you can use various assessment tools and techniques like colleague feedback, online tests, surveys, and evaluations. Subsequently, you can set realistic targets, prioritize learning requirements, and track progress.
Map out your learning journey
After understanding your learning needs, the next step is to map out your learning journey. Consider which methods work for you and go for them. For instance, if you learn best in a classroom, you can opt for mentorship programs, workshops, or even peer groups. Alternatively, you can learn soft and technical skills from webinars, dedicated online courses, podcasts, or physical books.
Hands-on experience is also valuable. You can volunteer, join competitions like hackathons, join professional networks, or even freelance.
Integrate your skills
Having made significant progress in achieving your learning goals, you can subsequently integrate your newfound, balanced skillset into your industry. You can use skills in collaboration, creativity, communication, or leadership skills, incorporating them with your technical skills. For instance, your communication skills can be put to the test when explaining complex, technical concepts to less tech-savvy colleagues such as product managers or clients.
Integrating your skills this way can help you enhance your overall impact, credibility, and performance.
Get support and feedback
The surest indicator of your learning progress is the type of feedback that you receive from managers, colleagues, and clients. You can request constructive feedback on tasks and presentations from your peers or superiors and use it to gauge your progress.
You can also get support from your networks, sharing your challenges and successes and getting relevant tips, advice, and perspectives to help you further.
Understand industry requirements
The first IT industry skill set requirement is never to stop learning. As the industry evolves, so do the technical and soft skills required to stay relevant.
To grow your IT career, you can never stop updating your range of technical and soft skills. So, educate yourself, keep abreast of the latest innovations, and seek advice from experienced professionals to understand what you need to maintain a balanced skillset.
Have the right skill set? Connect with a top IT company
Possessing the right balance of technical and soft skills can be the key to a successful career in IT. If you are looking to begin or enhance your tech career, we can help.
We have an extensive network of IT employers throughout the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast Regions, and Florida, and we can match you with one that best fits your unique skill set. Get started today.
