The 5 Most In-Demand Soft Skills Every Employer Wants a Tech Professional to Have

There’s a lot of opportunity in tech careers, but these can also be competitive positions. When preparing for your first interview for a tech position, you may be unsure what to discuss. How do you make yourself stand out? 

It turns out that tech employers look for soft skills as much as hard, technical skills during the interviewing process. If you don’t know where to begin, here are five in-demand soft skills that tech employers want to see in your next interview.

1. Communication Skills

Communication skills are essential for anyone to have. However, it’s particularly important for tech professionals. You’ll need to convert information and technical jargon into concise, understandable content for your company leaders to make high-level decisions without stumbling through complex charts, analyses, and other complicated data.

2. Teamwork

Communication isn’t just about talking to your boss. You’ll need to work as a team to get projects done. Many tech workforces use tenets of Agile team structures, so employers will want to see if you can manage projects collaboratively with your peers. 

Outside of technical projects, software engineers can help essentially every other area of a company. Sales and marketing especially benefit from their help with analyzing data and assessing digital possibilities.

3. Business Know-how

Tech workers process information every day about the company’s competition, sales, marketing trends, online capabilities, and other business-related topics. Going hand-in-hand with communication skills, understanding the business mindset will help you meet the company’s needs. Take the time to build up your business lingo, and you’ll find that understanding complex ideas from business leaders and other stakeholders will become easier than ever.

4. Product Knowledge

We often hear this term when talking about a salesforce. However, it’s also important for tech employees. Your software engineering work will be a product or service, so you’ll need to demonstrate a clear understanding of how it works, how it’s best used, and how the underlying company operates. If you go to an interview with the answers to these questions, your interviewer will appreciate your diligence.

5. Attention to Detail

A single line of bad code can render the entire project useless. An irrelevant piece of information can cause a business leader to make a catastrophic decision. Tech professionals need to be able to discern good information from bad, and pull only what’s necessary. You’ll need to show special attention to detail, especially during technical interviews, to prove that you have what it takes to work accurately and effectively.

We hope these five skills give you some insight into what your potential employer is looking for in a tech professional. Now you know what soft skills to work on for whichever tech career you may pursue.

Reese Jones is a freelance writer and blog contributor who covers topics in tech, business, finance, and general lifestyle. Following work in multiple tech startups, she is now pursuing a graduate degree in her hometown in the UK.