Soft skills are quite important for IT professionals. And more companies and IT pros realize this. Let’s take a look at the top soft skills for tech people.

A Harris polls showed that 77% of employers value soft skills as much as hard skills. An additional analysis by Burning Glass showed that one in four of the most sought-after skills in tech job listings were various soft skills.

Soft skills on the rise

The study pointed to five soft skills which are the most sought after. They are: Communication, Organization, Writing, Project management and Planning. As you can see, these are soft skills which would greatly help tech people in their everyday work. Especially when they have to sync their work with people from other departments. They are also helpful for the time when they have to organize a lot of tasks and more.

Other soft skills also enjoy a rise in demand. They though vary a bit in accordance with the specifics of each company and even each team. Even so, these skills are: Creativity, Teamwork, Quality Assurance, Detail-oriented and Building effective relationships.

These skills are vital for the overall increase of the performance of employees. They are also a good way to increase the overall satisfaction of employees. With better communication they will achieve more, improve their relations with colleagues and generally feel better about themselves.

Here’s a bit more detail about what specific soft skills can help with:

Communication soft skills are helpful not only for verbal communication, but also for emails, proposals, documents. Combined with Writing skills, they can help tech people easily explain their work to people who are not that technical. That’s an often seen problem with tech pros. Communication is also important when talking with outside partners, clients and so on.

Here comes the Teamwork, too. Communication within the team is essential. With teamwork comes leadership, but at the right moment. You have to know when to be a team player, when to act as leader and when to take one for the team.

And then – Creativity. One of the fun parts of the job of IT pros is that they always look towards the future. Things constantly change, evolve and trends shift all the time. Tech pros need to be flexible and ready to adapt, but they also have to be creative. They have to use their imagination to think about new ways to sole problems. Thinking about unique solutions is what can make or break a business.