Friday 5 April 2013

Week 9


·         Explain why adaptability and interpersonal skills are important to an IT professional.

Among the skills that employers are looking for in the IT business field, adaptability is ranked the highest along with communication, interpersonal skills and a strong work ethic.
As we move into the new millennium, IT roles are shifting at a rapidly increasing pace. Technical skills alone are not sufficient for success in the IT profession --- soft skills like adaptability, interpersonal skills, communication, problem solving, and teamwork are increasingly important. Recognizing that no curriculum can provide all training needed by every employee in every position, the issue then becomes to identify which specific sets of knowledge, skills, and abilities are most important for IT professionals.

Why is adaptability so important to an IT professional? As all know that IT professionals face many changes and challengers in their career life adaptability plays a main role to overcome these challengers. They never can expect what kind of change is coming down the road, which is why being able to adapt to the environmental, professional and organizational changes - to bend - and remain as nimble as possible when working through change at their work place. In addition, if the IT person is able to adapt to unfamiliar situations quickly, he is obviously going to make a better impression on his employer hence who fit into the company culture tend to be more successful and productive than those hired simply because they fit the job description. Some studies indicate that almost half of an employee’s success in the first 18 months of being hired results from fitting well into the company environment.
In addition to this, among all challenges faced by IT professionals today, developing strong interpersonal skills also ranks as one of the biggest and most critical. In fact, studies show their ability to work with people can make the difference between IT project failure and success. These interpersonal skills include; personality awareness, communication, conflict management, trust building and collaboration. Having all this in an IT professional will help him/her achieve; an effective deal with a variety of personality types, better meet the needs of their teammates and customers, effectively handle conflicts that arise with teammates and customers, enhance trust with teammates and customers and lastly work collaboratively with teammates and customers.

Recent literature has identified many communication and leadership inadequacies amongst senior IT managers and consequent breakdowns in the IT/business relationship. This is due to the lack of adaptability and interpersonal skills that the individual has. Therefore, considering all these factors, adaptability and interpersonal skills is very important to have in an IT professional.

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