How To Sell Your Soft Skills for an IT Job

While you may have the hard or technical skills needed for a certain job in the IT field, have you considered the soft skills that may come into play? If not, consider this: Top authorities in the tech industry suggest top-notch soft skills or people skills could launch your career in IT to the next level. 

By Helen Harris

As you are applying for jobs in the information technology (IT) sector, you probably already have a clear understanding of the hard skills you bring to the table. 

Hard skills are technical abilities that add value to a workplace. For example, if you are going into a programming career, Scott Dell notes that you probably have a working knowledge of the programs SQL, R or Python, and this knowledge would be a hard skill.  

But what about soft skills? While staying abreast of the latest developments in the IT world is important, this facet of your skillset could be even more valuable to getting ahead in your career. 

“Soft skills are more geared toward personality,” said Chelsey Opare-Addo, Business Insider’s “Tech Recruiter to Know in 2022,” Uber recruiter and resume writer at Not Your Mother’s Resume. 

Rob Kim, educator, Gallup certified strengths coach and LinkedIn Top Voice 2022, further clarifies that soft skills “never go out of style”. He says you  have to develop them through experience working with people, and that these skills can typically be found at the bottom of any job posting. Having pristine soft skills in the tech industry could help you stand out from the crowd. 

Why is that? Because attitude is everything. 

A recent article from NASDAQ indicates that in a remote-work world, soft skills are becoming a priority for employers — and harder to come by. 

“Among employers, 28% say they’re experiencing difficulties finding applicants who display accountability and self-discipline, qualities that are increasingly important as remote work becomes the norm for many businesses,” said the source. 

What Soft Skills Are Important in IT 

But before exploring a few soft skills that are important within IT, Opare-Addo explains that just like many major career fields (such as healthcare), IT is broad. To best determine the soft skills you need to hone in on, you first need to understand or decide which IT sector you want to focus on. 

Across the board, however, Opare-Addo has seen that soft skills such as patience, customer service, and communication (including being able to translate complex topics into layman’s terms) are valuable soft skills for just about any IT professional.

“My recommendation to people would be to identify what exactly they want to do [within the IT career field,]” said Opare-Addo. “There are some IT jobs where you really have to be influential without having the authority; you have to be able to talk to people, break down complex ideas and translate them to the business. And there's some IT jobs that are just coding, and recruiters and HR want people who are analytical and pragmatic.” 

To add to Opare-Addo’s list of skills, ManpowerGroup also released the top soft skills that tech companies are looking for right now in a recent article. The source’s list of top skills include the following: 

• Critical thinking and analysis
• Creativity and originality
• Reasoning and problem-solving
• Reliability and self-discipline 
• Resilience and adaptability

How To Advocate for Your IT Soft Skills in an Interview

“Soft skills are what are going to elevate you and allow you to keep going in your career,” said Kim. “And frankly, if you look at a lot of senior leadership positions and manager positions, these are generally people who have really good people skills. But ironically, we don't really tend to measure these skills often — or just assume that everyone has these skills.” 

So, once you know what soft skills you possess for a certain job in IT and you have made it to the interview process, you need to understand how to best advocate for yourself and prove that you have those skills. 

Because unlike hard skills, there is no clear-cut test to indicate if you’re a good communicator, work well with others or have empathy. 

To help get your strengths across to hiring managers, Opare-Addo recommends going a step beyond just saying you are good at something or possess a skill. Instead, include that skill in a clear-cut example or story. 

“I think that stories are really important here,” said Opare-Addo. “People generally aren't impressed with ‘I have good customer service’ or ‘I'm patient.’ They're more impressed when you bring it to life in a story.”

Opare-Addo furthers that once you identify roughly five soft skills you need for a job by thoroughly reading the job description, then work on thinking about examples of when you’ve used those skills in the past. Then practice telling those stories or brief examples. 

To help develop concrete examples of soft skills, Kim adds to Opare-Addo’s advice. He states that you should also ask yourself some questions (once you have an idea of the soft skills you possess for a certain role) such as the following: 

• How did I educate people in my last role and explain concepts?  
• When was I able to demonstrate something that was complex in order to resolve an issue?  
• When was I able to simplify a concept for someone?
• When was the last time that I collaborated with other people to resolve an issue? 

Kim stresses that while you will still very much need the hard skills, such as running code or developing websites or analyzing data, the soft skills in the IT realm are what will help you get to that next level in your career. And if you want to tap into what soft skills you possess naturally, he even suggests consulting a certified career coach who can help you identify those skills — which you can then strengthen and apply to your tech career.  

Top Takeaways 

How To Sell Your Soft Skills for an IT Job 

• You develop soft skills by working with people, and these skills can typically be found at the bottom of any job posting. 
•  To best determine the soft skills you need to hone in on, you first need to understand or decide which IT sector you want to focus on. 
• Soft skills such as patience, customer service, and communication (including being able to translate complex topics into layman’s terms) are valuable soft skills for just about any IT professional.
• To help get your strengths across to hiring managers, include the soft skill in a clear-cut example or story. 
• While you will still very much need the hard skills, the soft skills in the IT realm are what will help you get to that next level in your career.