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7 Valuable Soft Skills That Can Help Boost Your Career!

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Developing your soft skills helps boost your IT career. Although your hard skills are important, your soft skills have a greater impact on your employability and longevity with a company.

Your soft skills determine how you interact with others. This affects how well you work with colleagues and coworkers to finish projects.

As a result, you should prioritize developing your soft skills along with your hard skills. The following are some of the soft skills to focus on.

Discover seven valuable soft skills that can help boost your IT career.

1. Communication

Communication is required to write, speak, actively listen, and collaborate. These skills are important for writing emails, talking with colleagues and coworkers, and sharing presentations.

2. Productivity

Your ability to strategize, organize, plan, and deliver results impacts your productivity. Showing your teammates, manager, and coworkers they can count on you to have things done by the deadline makes you a valuable team member.

Your productivity skills help you manage your time, maintain focus, and finish your work on time. This also helps you create a plan to reach the goals and requirements of a project within the timeline.

Using your productivity skills helps you balance multiple projects and changing priorities. This also lets you overcome obstacles to get more done in less time.

3. Problem-Solving

Problem-solving skills help you analyze and resolve issues both individually and as a team. Your ability to think critically, ask questions, and make decisions helps you solve problems. You can calmly and objectively discuss an issue, develop potential resolutions, and implement the best one.

4. Creativity

Your ability to think outside the box helps you develop original ideas and perspectives. Your curiosity encourages you to ask questions, learn, and find unique ways to add value to the organization.

Developing your creativity helps you contribute ideas to solve problems and resolve issues. It also helps you remain open-minded while overcoming obstacles.

5. Confidence

Confidence in your ability to complete tasks and reach goals is important. This helps you learn and develop your skills to provide more value to the organization.

Displaying confidence involves finding the resources and support needed to finish your work. This helps you maintain a positive attitude.

Showing confidence means assertively interacting with others. This can help you secure leadership positions.

6. Agility

Your ability to adapt to changing work situations is essential. This helps you complete your work and meet expectations during times of change.

Agility is required to stay curious and navigate through challenging times. It also helps you remain open-minded when talking with others.

Remaining agile lets you make fast decisions when information is limited. It also lets you change between tasks as your priorities change.

7. Self-Awareness

Self-awareness lets you appropriately monitor, manage, and display your emotions in the workplace. This helps you professionally interact with others.

Being self-aware involves reflecting on and learning from your experiences and mistakes. It also includes seeing things from others’ viewpoints.

Displaying self-awareness helps you collaborate with colleagues and coworkers. It also builds trust with others.

Are You Looking to Boost Your IT Career?

When the time comes to advance your career, include RightStone in your job search. Use this link to our job board.

4 Ways to Advance Your Career by Embracing Your CIO’s Strategy

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As an IT professional, advancement along your career path is important. One way to move forward is by helping the CIO attain their strategic goals for the company. Understanding the CIO’s overall mission and the role of technology to increase company performance demonstrates your own strategic thinking abilities. You can talk about your experiences in future interviews to set yourself apart from other candidates and potentially land a new job.

Helping the CIO reach any of the following four priorities this year can aid in your career progression.

1. Data Analysis

Use your data literacy to address business needs and outcomes. This helps you transform the company to better carry out its mission. Understanding the analysis process, analytical tools, and how to work with data lets you collaborate with non-technical users and fill business needs through data and technology. This helps the organization become more inclusive, an issue that all stakeholders should be focused on.

2. Movement of Data to the Cloud

Most companies are moving their data to the cloud, adopting a software as a service (SaaS) solution, and increasing their cybersecurity. You can use your documentation, task delegation, and knowledge-sharing skills to facilitate and support these updates. Promotion of growth makes you a positive change agent in the organization.

3. Expansion of Self-Service Technologies

Many companies are looking for scalable, secure, and effective self-service solutions. This is because the pandemic continues to impact the way basic services are delivered to consumers. Demonstration of your knowledge and skills involving self-service technologies makes you an important team player. You can create practical roadmaps for adoption, transparency, and related issues.

4. Navigation of a Cultural Shift

Company culture is difficult to feel and maintain during times of significant change. This includes shifting from in-person work to remote or hybrid work and back again. Because working in silos is ineffective, you can break down the barriers by becoming a culture contributor. You can make it a goal to collaborate on projects to drive successful outcomes. This may include welcoming, training, and mentoring new team members, sharing knowledge and ideas, or boosting morale. Doing your part to contribute to a positive work environment and culture can lead to new opportunities within the organization.

Advance Your Career

Find a job with more responsibility with help from RightStone. Visit our job board today.

Successful Professionals: How to Improve Your Communication

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Strong communication skills are necessary for career success. Because every job requires human interaction, the more easily you facilitate communication with others, the more efficient and effective your work will be. This is why developing your communication skills should be one of your top priorities.

Implement these five tips to improve your workplace communication.

1. Pay Attention to Communication Styles 

Knowing how others tend to communicate helps you effectively facilitate conversations. For instance, passive communicators typically act indifferent or agreeable to keep the peace. Aggressive communicators often freely express their emotions and can be intimidating. Passive-aggressive communicators may appear aloof when they are upset or annoyed. Assertive communicators usually are considerate and express themselves in a clear, direct manner. Careful observation of others’ verbal and nonverbal communication can help you adapt your own style to build a foundation for mutual understanding.

2. Actively Listen

Pay close attention to what others are saying. Ask clarifying questions to show interest and understanding. This builds respect for the people you communicate with and facilitates collaboration.

3. Show Empathy

Demonstrate a shared understanding of others’ emotions. Showing you can relate to how someone feels helps you more effectively communicate with them. You can determine an appropriate approach and exhibit the proper feelings toward what they are talking about.

4. Be Persuasive

Convincing others to complete a desired action or behave in a certain way is important. It can lead to increased productivity and help achieve a goal. The stronger your ability to influence others’ attitudes and behaviors, the stronger your impact within the organization.

5. Practice Public Speaking

Increase the effectiveness of your presentations by repeatedly practicing them. For instance, begin each talk with something that immediately engages your audience and holds their interest. Also, use notes to guide your presentations. Additionally, maintain eye contact with your audience. Plus, project your voice and pace your discussion so the information is easy to process. Further, use visual aids and end on a strong note to leave a lasting impression.

Looking for a New IT Role?

RightStone has a variety of IT roles that fit your skills, experience, and interests. Visit our job board today.

5 Soft Skills Essential for a Successful IT Career

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The IT industry wants technical skills and in-demand certifications. What candidates often forget, however, is the bonus presented by soft skills. 

Soft skills previously took a back seat to your professional expertise, especially if you offered a particularly hard-to-find qualification. Today, they’re not the core skills that get you hired. 

What are the most useful soft skills for a successful IT career? Here’s what RightStone’s top clients look for in a new hire. 

Communication 

We still think of IT roles as being highly technical. Part of your ability to do the job depends on your ability to communicate. From emails to proposals to leadership, your ability to communicate project parameters is at the heart of your success. 

Collaboration 

Twenty years ago, the right lone wolf developer could have the pick of any job. Today, employers look for developers who have both technical and collaboration skills. 

Being able to work with others is a core skill, particularly when you work remotely. Remote working requires you to work cohesively and allow room for creative thinking from all team members. 

If you can collaborate, you can get your product to market faster — and that’s what employers look for. 

Creativity 

Although learning in IT can be rote, you have the freedom to run once you get beyond the basics. Here, creativity can flourish, and employers look for creative problem-solving skills. After all, it’s not just your ability to create solutions that matter. You need to solve problems in a way that makes the most sense for your unique end users. 

Negotiation 

Your negotiation skills is a soft skill that not only helps you move up the career ladder but have practical day-to-day uses. You can negotiate with clients to coax them into solutions that make the most sense for their business. You can also negotiate with team members to help them make a deadline. 

And of course, you can negotiate your salary, project budget, and duties to help you win the job you want. Employers see your negotiation skills from the beginning, so don’t be afraid to show them off. 

Empathy 

Empathy is a skill that you need in any position if you want to work for, with, or in service of other people. Empathy not only allows you to work more closely with a team, but it can be your superpower by enabling you to take responsibility for yourself and your work. 

If you have empathy, more people want to work with you. 

Do You Have the Soft Skills Employers Want? 

Employers want to know about your experience, portfolio, and certifications. However, an impressive resume isn’t the only thing you need in a competitive job market. You also need the soft skills that employers want. 

After all, technical skills get a project started, but skills collaboration, communication, and empathy get the job done. 

Do you have what employers are looking for? Let us know. Click here to view RightStone’s jobs board.