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Five Top Skills For Working In ITby Ben on November 28, 2011 edit

Communication

Communication skills are very important f or IT employees, IT contractors, ITconsultants and pretty much any kind of IT worker. Whether you’re in a client-f acing role or not, you’ll still need to communicate with people – your bosses,your co-workers, customers, clients and visitors.

Stand out f rom the crowd with good communication skills. This includes listening,speaking, general conversational skills, and also non-verbal skills such as emailcommunication. One of the items mentioned in the Five Great Tips to Be MoreProf essional At Work article was on communication. It ’s important to learn and it ’s a great help to yourcareer!

Analysis

Almost all kinds of IT roles involve analysis. You could be doing technical support, help desk, sof twaredevelopment, systems architecture, or anything else in the IT industry – they all require some kind ofanalysis. The ability to look at a situation or issue and break it down into smaller pieces, to f ind solutionsor answers is a very important skill to have. This can either be technical analysis (f or programming ortechnical support) or business analysis (f or, well, business analysts or even project managers).

Writing

Similar to the communication skill above, writ ing skills are important as you need to be able to convey yourmessage and point ef f ectively. This is shown mostly in emails and project documentation – although thereare many other areas that involve writ ing. Knowing basic grammar rules, being able to explain your messageto your target audience, and not using a small vocabulary are several traits of a good writer.

Self Management

As you grow f rom a child into an adult, one of the skills you learn is to keep yourself occupied. This is alsotrue in the inf ormation technology world. You can’t keep going to your manager or boss and ask them whatto do and expect them to tell you every step of the way. Additionally, if you’ve got a lot of work to do, youneed to be able to manage it yourself – manage your t ime, manage what you need to be able to do, andalso recognise when you can’t get things done. This all comes with experience, but being good at this willallow you to stand out f rom the crowd.

Performing Under Stress

The f inal important skill f or IT prof essionals to have is the ability to perf orm under stress. Ask anyone whoworks in inf ormation technology about stress, and they’ll tell you it has the potential to be a very stressf uljob. If you want to be a great IT prof essional, or great IT consultant (which I hope, because that’s thereason you came to this site!), then you need to be able to manage your stress levels and still perf orm yourjob. This will get noticed by others in a good way and will be appreciated. I’ve written an article on how tomanage your stress levels in the workplace.

In summary, these are what I believe to be the top f ive skills that every IT prof essional should have:

Communication

Analysis

Writ ing

Self Management

Perf orming Under Stress

What do you think? Post your comments in the area below!

For more IT career t ips and inf ormation on how YOU can improve YOUR IT career, visit Complete ITProf essional!

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