Statistically, the most stressful part of looking for a job is the interview. An open role for Web Developer increases dopamine in the person looking for a job. Before one web developer clicks the Apply button for the wanted job, one needs to be confident about their soft skills. The confidence from a technical perspective is way high, and presence. But are the soft skills followed that way, and why do we need them?
Equal personal development is necessary for progress, not only in your professional career but also in your private life. What do we think when we discuss Equal development? The most common and traditional way of thinking is that one web developer has two main skills, Technical and Soft skills. These two skills we divided into many small other skills. They are deeply connected with these two, which are the main engine skills.
Here at Social Hackers Academy, we dedicate work to the Soft Skills of the students because we believe that strong communication, feelings, and understanding skills are from the same importance level as technical ones. We have developed a parallel program for soft skills that follow the main Web Development program. The idea is to keep the balance between these two important – as we say – engine skills.
Here are the most important soft skills one can have.
Every of these will be scanned from you in the interview process.
- Communication: To effectively collaborate and work towards a common objective, a developer must be able to express ideas, thoughts, and questions to team members, clients, and stakeholders.
- Problem-Solving: Developers frequently run into difficult problems that call for innovative thinking and the capacity to troubleshoot and come up with solutions.
- Adaptability: Flexibility and adapting to new tools and technologies as they arise are crucial skills for developers because the technology industry is continuously changing and evolving.
- Time management is essential for meeting deadlines and ensuring that projects are finished successfully. Prioritising work and controlling time properly are key skills.
- Teamwork: The success of every team depends on its members’ ability to work well together, collaborate, and maintain a positive team dynamic.
- Empathy: To be able to connect with your co-workers. Understanding their feelings in and outside work is crucial to better teamwork in soft and hard times. In the end, we are emotional beings; therefore, we need to care for each other to have a better mood, motivation and strength for upcoming challenges.
Why does one Web Developer need to have strong, soft skills?
The profession of web development necessitates a blend of hard and soft talents. A web developer must have strong technical skills in order to write code and create websites, but excellent soft skills can be just as crucial.
Speaking well is one of a web developer’s most crucial soft talents. Working in a team is a common aspect of web development projects, and it’s essential to be able to communicate technical ideas to team members who aren’t technically savvy. A web developer may also have to interact with clients and other stakeholders, so clearly articulating how a website will function and how it will satisfy the needs of the client is important.
One soft skill that is crucial for web developers is attention to detail. A web developer with great attention to detail will be able to detect and correct faults more quickly because the development process frequently entails several tiny jobs and debugging.
Employers are constantly looking for the soft skills of web developers in the interview process.
Soft talents can help you distinguish from the competition while applying for jobs. Strong communication abilities, for instance, can help you convince potential employers of your qualifications and expertise. Your ability to solve problems can help you overcome obstacles at work. Our positive outlook can make you a pleasure to be around.
Even while soft talents are broader and cannot be measured like hard abilities. It is still crucial to provide specific examples of how you have applied them in the past.
Highlighting your soft talents in your resume, CV, and job interviews. Providing concrete instances of how you have used such skills in previous employment will help you present your qualifications and leave a lasting impression on prospective employers.
Web Developers, in general, have very good soft skills. Here is our case study on it.
We want to address the myth, with confidence, that Web Developer are people with no developed soft skills. It’s not true, but the space for improvements is unlimited. We want to bring you a student point of view on this topic, and we interviewed SHA student Panagiotis Papadopoulos. We discussed the importance of Soft Skills in the learning period in the Academy.
Hello Panagiotis, hope you are well and motivated as always.
How do soft skills such as communication, problem-solving, time management, and self-awareness help you in your studies and future career?
From my personal point of view, I have noticed the great importance and value of acquiring or improving my soft skills during my learning journey with SHA so far, such as time management, communication, self-awareness and, of course problem solving skills which is a key element of coding itself.
More specifically, time management is a vital skill that one has to master to achieve the best results given a limited timeframe. I believe this will be the case when being hired, where I will have to plan my own schedule according to my own set of tasks but also relate them to tasks delivered by other team members.
This is where communication skills come in handy. Effective communication is a key skill to successfully blend into a team. And this is the case for a student and a future junior developer. This is a basic prerequisite for any job, but for the tech industry, especially which is reliant greatly on projects delivered by teams of developers, where communication and bonding of team members is a must.
Self-awareness is also an essential skill an individual must master. It is useful not only for studying or working but also for continuous personal development and growth. That helps me dive deep and reflect on my strengths and weaknesses to utilise the first to the maximum degree and eliminate the latter. Also, a crucial requirement is to receive constructive feedback without taking it personally and being hurt, as this contributes to one becoming a better professional and, nonetheless, a better person.
Last but not least, problem-solving. Coding is not just learning a programming language’s syntax or memorising it (thanks, Google!). Coding is mainly about problem-solving using logic while utilising the maximum of my creative thinking and imagination. Today, it is about thinking out of the box when I face a demanding code challenge or assignment.
How do soft skills help you progress and face the challenges of being a student?
As a student, I am dealing with the task of assimilating a great amount of information in a field totally new to me within a short timeframe and delivering the required assignments on time. This involves a careful strategic time management plan to assign specific time slots within my day for specific tasks, technical and non-technical, based on the priority of importance and urgency. It is not always the case that I am successful in achieving the ultimate time management result.
As mentioned in the previous question, good communication skills are required to be a team member. Communication challenges arise in our multilingual student environment, which can be overcome by asking questions for extra clarification or asking for specific examples. Nonetheless, being a good listener is a must.
I have also noticed that I sometimes need to use fewer English idioms (I studied in the UK when I was young), which may be misunderstood by some of my colleagues, not in a bad way but just assuming a totally different meaning of phrases or words.
Regarding self-awareness, I also find this skill particularly useful. Working in this field helps me re-assess my strengths and weaknesses. Also to be able to learn how constructive feedback is delivered and how I can use it to improve and develop. Self-awareness is also very valuable to help me realise how I feel at certain points of the learning process (which consists of many ups and downs). Why I feel this way and what I can do to improve my mood and find more effective ways to deal with challenging situations.
This leads me to problem-solving skills, which is the most challenging aspect of my learning journey. After choosing a career change and joining SHA, I thought I had good problem-solving skills. However, I was surprised to find that there is a lot of room for improvement since this is a very demanding process that involves a lot of creativity, imagination and thinking totally “out of the box” since one problem can be solved in many different ways.
Since I am more like a convergent thinker (based on logic). I need to develop my divergent mode of thinking (based on imagination) more. And this can be quite challenging sometimes due to my scientific background. What I have learned so far about problem-solving is to divide one big problem into smaller sub-problems, so I don’t feel overwhelmed. And believe me. It works in everyday life problems/challenges as well!
In your opinion, how important are soft skills to succeed in the workforce compared to technical skills?
I will start by quoting the words of Mr Rohan Rajiv, Director of Product Management at LinkedIn. “Foundational soft skills have become even more important given the rise of remote and autonomous work and are growing in importance across industries, levels and work environments. In fact, these soft skills were featured in 78% of jobs posted globally over the last three months.”
Reading through several articles by pronounced leaders in the tech industry. I realised a major shift of companies towards soft skills, more than technical skills, in the hiring process. In the older times, getting a job was mostly about your technical background and work experience. But can one deliver his job role just by having the technical skills? Certainly not! It is like having a supercar but not a capable driver to drive it to its ultimate performance and use its special capabilities.
The same is valid in the tech industry, where teams deliver projects. The team can be thought of as a chain, and each team member is a chain link. If one link breaks, there is a high risk for the project to collapse. This is why tech companies are focusing more than ever on having effective screening methods for soft skills. They assess potential candidates and also invest a lot in training their human resources to improve and develop their soft skills.
Of course, this doesn’t cancel out the great importance of the necessary technical skills as well. If these are missing, then, again, this is a reason for a non-fit candidate.
Here we understand more the importance of Soft Skills in the Web Developer hiring process
To address this topic more to our community of students, alumni, fresh-graduated programmers and future students. We organise an event with HR expert Chrysavgi Nioma from ARHS Developments Hellas. The topic was: Breaking into Tech: Expert HR Tips for Interviews
Highlights of the Event:
Chrysavgi Nioma, the speaker, is an HR expert with previous expertise in the tech sector. She counsels job searchers to network as much as possible while being patient and persistent in their job search. Networking is crucial to finding a career that aligns with your values and interests. Nioma advises job seekers to create a LinkedIn profile and periodically check it for fresh job listings. She also advises taking coding classes and attending seminars to better grasp the field and expand your network of contacts. Finally, she says that she has experience working for consulting businesses.
In the employment process, soft skills are becoming increasingly crucial. Communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and adaptation are crucial to an employee’s success inside a company. Employers are searching for people with a good mix of hard and soft talents as the employment market gets competitive. Soft skills are equally necessary for job growth and progress as a Web Developer. As a result, job candidates must exhibit their technical ability and outstanding soft skills. Job searchers can improve their success chances by stressing hard and soft talents.
Recent Comments