Behavioral skills for IT career development

Every professional faces challenges in learning new skills throughout they career and this maturity contributes to progression in the seniority levels of the role played. This can occur both at the technical level, but also at the behavioral level. In this article, I will share some perspectives on how behavioral skills can impact career development in technology.

First, it is important to highlight a few differences between technical skills (hard skills) and behavioral skills (soft skills). A few decades ago, there was a strong focus on the first group of skills because it is concrete knowledge, the evaluation of professional competencies was more objective. However, from changes in the world of work, in addition to the importance of technical knowledge, the ability to relate to peers became valued. From this, the identification of behavioral skills for each position became a demand.

Currently, soft skills have gained a lot of prominence due to agile and collaborative work methodologies. Thus, the ability to observe one's own emotions, have active listening to others or manage one's own time efficiently significantly contributes to good professional performance.

The good news is that, like hard skills, soft skills can also be learned and developed through training, individual development plans, and other tools. This contributes to the professional not seeing themselves in a crystallized position, limiting their possibilities for career growth.

What are the standout behavioral skills in IT?

I will bring examples of skills that are differential at each seniority level of the development career, according to my experience, not only defining them but also exemplifying skills.

Internship

The moment of first contact with the job market can bring many challenges, especially in reconciling study and work demands. Depending on one’s major, the internship experience may be crossed by classes and vice versa, which demands a mindset shifting between the professional and study environment. Therefore, two soft skills that stand out in this phase are time management and proactivity.

Time management

This skill refers to the ability to observe one's own demands and availability of time, listing tasks considering effort and priorities. In addition, understanding the complexity of the task and dividing it into smaller steps is also super important. It is worth remembering that in the context of internships, Brazilian legislation determines a reduction in workload during the evaluation period at the higher education institution.

Proactivity

The internship opportunity allows you to come into contact with technologies and forms of action that often will not be taught in college or that there will be no space for practical action. Therefore, a proactive attitude within an organization can result in a faster learning curve and development opportunities.

Junior Dev

Upon reaching the position of junior developer, a phase of consolidation of theoretical and practical knowledge begins. Regardless of the career emphasis (front-end, back-end, or full-stack) and familiarity with certain languages, some soft skills can be great differentials for this learning context.

Communication

Communication skills encompass a series of behaviors beyond verbal language. Especially in the context of remote work, developing an objective speech both synchronously and asynchronously contributes to better team alignment and more clarity about individual performance.

Some examples of situations where communication skills demonstrate themselves as great differentials: communication of doubts and needs, elaboration and listening of feedback, task completion in the collective, alignment on tasks performed, among others.

Adaptability

Within IT field, agile work models and the emergence of new technologies demand constant adaptation from developers. Often, knowledge learned in the undergraduate course no longer has much compatibility with the market or the turnover between teams may require adaptation to a new project and team context quickly. Therefore, learning to adapt to different contexts and demonstrating flexibility in the face of different scenarios can be a great differential as an intern who seeks the maximum learning opportunities within an organization.

Mid-level Dev

At this point in the career where there is greater specialization in technical performance fronts, some soft skills can enhance this process and contribute to code with better quality.

Process vision

This skill can be understood as the combination of other soft skills already mentioned earlier, such as time management and adaptability, for example. But in addition, process vision refers mainly to the ability to visualize a beginning, middle, and end for certain activities, considering more than one path to that solution. Therefore, having consistency in this skill, the professional begins to have a broader view of the code and how their work and that of their peers are related. Thus, the code review process becomes more accurate.

Organization

The ability to organize oneself can be observed in different contexts, whether at the level of personal, collective, or idea tasks, in speech... there are infinite possibilities. In general, at this seniority level, good handling of different elements is expected, from individual time management, tasks performed in the code, and the use of different organization platforms.

Senior Dev

In this position, the consolidation of technical knowledge and some behavioral skills allows a more complex set of soft skills to be developed when occupying that position. In addition, regardless of the person in the senior position occupying a management or technical pillar position, soft skills still have a key role in good professional performance.

Business vision

As the career and responsibilities grow, working on a project is no longer only related to the execution and management of tasks but also to understanding the relevance of that partnership to the business. Furthermore, understanding aspects of the technology market, the strongest trends can be important for new insights and for maintaining innovation.

People management

Even without occupying a leadership position, the senior person on the team becomes a reference due to accumulated technical knowledge and experience. Thus, team management skills can be of great help considering the development of hard skills of people with lower seniority.

Conclusion

These are some soft skills that I assess as contributing to the development of a career in technology according to my professional experience. Above all, it is important to constantly evaluate difficulties and potentialities to be able to focus on developing these skills.

In addition, nothing is written in stone! Currently, the job market is very fluid. Therefore, the development of behavioral skills should not be seen as a task to be fulfilled but rather as a way to chart the best paths for your career.