Sorry, FTW was so 2016. Or 2015. Anyway, my point is, soft skills are awesome!
The Washington Post has an article titled The surprising thing Google learned about its employees — and what it means for today’s students
Today’s students. I believe we are all students of and in life, so that means us.
The premise of the article can be summed up in this: “STEM skills are vital to the world we live in today, but technology alone, as Steve Jobs famously insisted, is not enough.” This is pretty big, considering it comes from a company that used to care only about mega-tech abilities.
You aren’t a programmer? Maybe… just maybe, that is okay!
You aren’t technical? Perhaps there’s a glimmer of hope that you have a place in this world!
I’ve been looking at a lot of job postings lately… there are a lot of desperate recruiters hoping to find technologists. And those jobs pay crazy well. But indeed, non-technical people are needed. Furthermore, technical people with soft skills are really needed… even if companies seem to only focus on hard skills.
No matter what you want your next gig to be, let me encourage you to improve your soft skills. Surprisingly, one of my top courses on Pluralsight is to help you become a better listener. An active listener. An engaged communicator. Other soft skills might be empathy, outbound communication (writing and talking), presentation, persuasion, patience, perseverance, etc.
Some people are naturally good at some of these. But these are skills, and skills can be learned and improved.
So learn. And improve.
Check out my 29 soft skills courses on Pluralsight here. You can get a free 10 day pass on the site, or if you ask me nicely I might be able to hook you up with a 30 day pass. Watch any of my courses and get upgrades on JibberJobber (win-win!), but the real benefit is that you can learn and improve your soft skills.
That sounds like a great personal goal for 2018!