I want to thank Carrie at Penn State Shenango for bringing me into speak the other night to one of their Information Sciences Classes.
Penn State Shenango in Sharon, PA; about an hour and a half north of Pittsburgh or about an hour from where I grew up in Oil City, Pennsylvania.
I was there to speak on behalf of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, where I work full time. The focus of my talk was on the technology industry around Pittsburgh and general career advice for students looking to enter the technology field.
Here are a couple of highlights.
If you are looking to get into information technology, advanced manufacturing, life sciences, or any technical field in general make sure you have your technical skills mastered. However, make sure you don’t forget the soft skills. When I say soft skills I mean skills that are just as important as technical skills: public speaking, communication, writing, speaking, phone etiquette, listening, and many more.
Many technology workers, especially programmers think they won’t have to interact with very many of their co-workers since they are the technology people. Therefore they don’t concentrate much on their social skills. Every technology recruiter I have spoken with who is looking to hire someone has emphasized how important communication skills and soft skills are. In fact some have even gone as far to say they are more important. The fact of the matter is you can be trained how to be a better engineer, programmer or scientist, but it is hard to teach someone how to communicate better and how to write more effectively. This type of training will take years.
The one example from my own life I can think of is when I first started working at the Tech Council my writing skills were awful. Even with a book out some still might say that. My boss at the time politely laid a brochure on my desk for a business writing class. I had had business writing classes before but in her polite opinon not much of the information had stayed with me. She said the company would pay for me to attend this class, so I went. After I thought about it I realized that she was trying to help me improve my communication skills but in a discrete and polite fashion. I am really glad she did not come out and say,
“Justin your writing skills are horrible. Why don’t you take this class to see if they can help do anything to help you?”
Over time any many, many classes, I feel I have improved my writing skills a little bit. However, I will say that I needed a ton of editing on the manuscript for my book. It would have been awful without it.
A couple of suggestions on how to improve your soft skills:
1. Take a speech class (I recommend Toastmaster or Dale Carnegie)
2. Write more; specifically write about how you feel – work, personal life, etc…
3. Ask your friends or family members how you are when it comes to communication. Take their criticism seriously and don’t fluff it off. If you do, that should tell you a lot about how your are when it comes to communication.
4. Read or listen to books about personal communication and listening
5. Make a conscious effort to improve your communication skills by a certain date and then put together a plan to do so. If you don’t know how to do this, seek out some help from someone who you know is a great communicator.
In closing, I am really glad Jane had enough courage to kindly tell me to improve my communication skills because they really needed it. I am a better writer and speaker because of it.
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Justin Driscoll is That Career Guy! He is an expert on helping people find their passion in life instead of their job! For more information on him please visit his web site at www.justindriscoll.net
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