The soft skills in IT: how to survive in a large and diverse team? Tips from SweetSoft

Big companies realize the importance of soft (flexible) skills.

Big companies realize the importance of soft (flexible) skills. Often the probationary period is an evaluation of these unobvious, but so important employer’s talents.

Managing directors understand that in the modern world, results are usually archived by a team, not a single individual. Thus the team must be productive. And the team will be productive if everybody feels comfortable and develops such important skills as kindness, respectfulness, friendliness. People won’t be able to demonstrate their knowledge to the best in a stressful environment. That is why the theme of soft skills is so actual and correlates with business results.

What are soft skills?

Flexible skills are special abilities that you cannot get in courses or other training. They are built up from childhood and correlate with emotional intelligence and empathy. A person can get them through long professional activity and careful work on himself/herself.

In opposite, hard skills are a set of specific actions that a person can learn in a certain amount of time. In other words, it is a confident mastery of programs, knowledge of programming languages, and so on.

Hard (technical skills)

For example, for full-stack JavaScript developer, hard skills include:

1. Strong knowledge of frameworks as Angular, React, and Vue.
2. Power with frontend libraries (such as Bootstrap).
3. Familiarity with NodeJS.
4. Understanding of TypeScript.
5. Experience in SQL.
6. Ability to do Modular and end-to-end testing.
7. Understanding of cybersecurity basics.

As you can see, this is quite realistic to learn in a few years.

Agile skills

Include many different facets: attitude toward people, interaction in the work process, a particular mindset. So, here are the soft skills that will help full-stack JavaScript developers gain the trust of the colleagues and the respect of superiors. It should be noted that these skills will be useful to all programmers and help them find their place under the IT sun.

Communication Area

Finding common ground is important in any industry, especially when it comes to IT teams, where 10 people may work on one project at the same time. We at SweetSoft value people with such features:

1. The ability to listen to the interlocutor.
2. Respectful attitude to another’s point of view.
3. Aptitude to negotiate with mediators, project-managers, and colleagues.
4. Constructive critique.
5. Capacity to accept comments and review.
6. Understanding to conduct business correspondence and communicate in messengers.

Leadership

Leadership is a character trait of true professionals, which consists of such properties:

1. Help for newbies.
2. Mentorship.
3. Supervision.
4. Competent conflict management.
5. Conflict resolution.
6. Assigning tasks to colleagues.
7. Intelligence to give transparent feedback.
8. Genius to explain a complicated task.
9. Managing with remote colleagues.
10. Working with motivation and inspiration.
11. Ability to conduct meetings.
12. Talent management.

A strong leader can find an individual approach to each team player and make the person feel that he or she is especially important. Mutual respect within the company is what allows surviving any crisis united and calmly.

Positive Attitude

Of course, all people are different. So, it is wrong to demand from introverts’ joyful public emotions and boundless optimism. But we at SweetSoft believe that a positive attitude involves such practices:

• If something does not work, try one more time. Then again. And again.
• There are at least 2 solutions to a problem.
• Any difficulty is an opportunity for growth.
• Any solution to a problem is an opportunity to be proud of yourself.

Positive qualities include the following:

1. Patience.
2. Enthusiasm.
3. Initiative.
4. Friendliness.
5. Sincerity.
6. Honesty.
7. Sense of humor.
8. Respectfulness.
9. Self-irony.
10. Ambitiousness.
11. Diplomacy.
12. Self-Reliance.

At first glance, it may seem that these qualities are not so important for a job. But being side by side with a person for eight hours a day, you realize that each of them is worth their weight in gold.

Teamwork

Success depends on empathy, emotional intelligence, tolerance, and the ability to soften “sharp edges”.

An effective worker can communicate with others, understand other people’s moods and life circumstances. Also, he or she can mediate between people and delineate areas of responsibility. For teamwork is particularly important:

• Ability to maintain the corporate spirit.
• Change of an embarrassment or problem into a joke.
• Keeping a friendly atmosphere.
• Knowledge to act cooperatively.

When hiring employees to the team, it is essential that the person feels as comfortable as the rest of the team.

Work Ethic

The employment ethic implies:

1. Understanding and meeting deadlines.
2. Knowing how to make the right schedule for yourself.
3. Multitasking.
4. Attentiveness.
5. Respect for business confidentiality.
6. Planning.
7. Self-discipline.
8. Results orientation.
9. Strong time management.
10. Punctuality.
11. Ability to cope with unfamiliar surroundings.

It is not enough to know many realms of programming. It is essential to be able to work with clients, data, volatile market conditions, and achieve planned results. The good news is that these skills come with experience.

Why are soft skills important?

Often an employer is willing to train a newbie in some areas of programming. Moreover, he wants to see an adequate, loyal, responsible, and interested in the job person.

In some positions, personal traits such as assiduity and patience are much more important than the number of successful cases.

Flexible skills development

If you feel that you may have difficulties in communicating with others, pay attention to the level of development of your soft skills.

Is it possible to develop them as an adult? Sure.

To do this, it is worth communicating more with people, carefully listening during dialogues, and asking questions. This will teach you to be a friendly conversationalist.

You can make a personal diary of emotions. You can record the emotions experienced during the day and the reasons that caused them. This will help you better understand the emotions of others.

You can join a hobby club, such as biking, make friends with your neighbors, and begin to behave using the maximum soft skills in practice.

How to be ‘’softer’’?

We recommend that you identify your values, as well as your strengths and weaknesses. Understanding what kind of person, you are is important for understanding and accepting others.

It is important to cultivate an open mind to the world and people. By communicating with people, you can not only get new opportunities but also learn personal success stories.

You should develop a calm and the ability to think positively. You can deal with stress by supporting others. By focusing on the good, you stop noticing the negative and begin to see new suggestions, ideas, and plans.

Ask friends and colleagues for help. Explain that you want to improve certain qualities in yourself and ask for support. We at SweetSoft think they will not refuse you.

Soft skills assessment

You can assess your level of soft skills with special psychological tests from the Internet. Another option could be a qualitative assessment of your friends or colleagues.

You can also assess the dynamics of the development on your own by writing down every day your achievements in each area.

At SweetSoft we believe that only those companies become legendary when their employees feel at home.

We carefully choose players for the SweetSoft team and are attentive to their working conditions. So, this way we create excellent projects.

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