I'm considering developing a video series on IT soft skills and I wanted to get some feedback around it before I did. I used to manage an IT internship program and I learned that the IT skills were always easy to come by, but their bedside manner needed some work.

I think it's different based on the person, their age, what type of job they are working towards and what they are trying to accomplish, but how valuable do you think these soft skills are and what are the biggest behavioral mistakes that IT pros make? What I'm trying to get at is this worth it to focus on or not?

Thanks!
Rob

I don't care what I have to do to get there... fly, drive, boat, walk... whatever... I'll be there!

@jaredbusch said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

@animal said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

Vivid

Isn't/wasn't that was a porn video company?

Haha... I appreciate the great feedback on the topic already. I think I'm seeing a bigger need for these skills than I initially thought

I'm thinking we need to rent out some RVs and pickup people along the way. I'll be coming from Chicago... I think it would be a fun ride down. Any takers?

@black3dynamite said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

@animal said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

@black3dynamite said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

Communication is an important one. For me, It took awhile getting comfortable at communicating with users when I first started working in IT.

Thanks for the feedback @black3dynamite - What in particular took a while for you in regards to communication? Just talking to them while working on their machines or in regards to responding to tickets, etc.

I was really shy so just talking with them was a challenge. And that can be either over the phone or in person. Eye contact while talking with them. Responding to emails after the job is done, etc.

Good stuff. I had an intern one time that was really shy and after training him for 4-6 weeks I had him do a presentation in front of 40 people on his experiences. He probably hated me at the time, but now he's a great friend of mine and isn't afraid to talk to people anymore.

We did a research project and interviewed over 30 HR Managers, IT Managers, CIOs, etc. There was an ultimate end goal for the company, but what I gathered from all of them was that a resume really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Meaning, it depends on what type of job you're looking to get and the resume should be molded around that job.

Example... a helpdesk engineer would want to focus on the jobs that showcase those talents. Showing you worked at a bar in college probably doesn't matter to the hiring manager. Sure, you might be great with people, but it's not relevant to the job. If you're looking to be a CIO, some of those helpdesk jobs might not be worth adding in. I always found that molding the resume for the job increases your likelihood of getting the interview... from there, it's an entirely different ballgame.

A few of the key takeaways from our research:

• In many of the interviews I attended the hiring manager wanted to quickly find out what projects the candidate had completed or worked on and with what capacity. Did they manage it from start to finish?

• With those projects, (when they interview the candidate of course) they want to know what problems they ran into during it. If they managed the project they should be able to identify the problems and how they resolved them. This shows the hiring manager how well they could perform in other situations.

• The candidates experience shows the hiring manager that they were continuously working on something. Having a lot of experience is great, but are there any gaps in the time from one to another? Also, why did they have so many jobs, roles, etc. They said (again, depending on the role and level) a resume with more than three pages was too much. The candidate needs to consolidate their most important experience within these guidelines.

• Having a list of skills and your education/certification is a must have. I think almost all of the people we spoke to said this is important because they can tell if the candidate has seen the technology. It might not mean they are an expert, but it can get a shoe in the door to start a conversation.

That all being said, you, Mr. Scott Alan Miller, are not like the majority of the IT world. You have genius beyond that which is known to man and I would imagine it has to be difficult to consolidate many of your experiences. I would suggest making sure LinkedIn is up-to-date and try to limit the job roles listed. Maybe pull in the skills from those other roles starting at a certain year, like 2010 and previous and bring it all into a category.

@scottalanmiller said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

@animal said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

@momurda said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

Trying not to condescend to users is a tough one; sometimes I am thinking "Youve been using a gd computer for 20 years, 8 hours a day, at least, and you dont know how to do this?" but of course one cant say that.

Haha, but we really do want to say that sometimes. I used to treat everyone like they never saw a computer before.

But in many ways, isn't automatically treating people that way essentially the definition of condescending? It's just that people that need to be condescended to won't notice.

That's the thing about condescension, when you actually do it, the person to whom you are doing it rarely knows it. They typically only notice when you aren't doing it, but they've gotten used to others doing it.

We're getting real deep here now haha. I love the conversations though. I doubt there's a perfect way to talk to someone in our world of IT, as someone else mentioned the very fact that someone doesn't know something you do can appear condescending by the nature of teaching them. I think if you can do the best you can to understand a client's needs (internal or external client) and don't act like a tool then you'll be ok.

There's been some really good conversations here (thank you all) and what I think could be really interesting is this... Maybe IT people need some soft skills, but maybe there's a need to show the users we support why we appear like we don't have soft skills at times. Maybe, just maybe, it appears that we're lacking in soft skills when really it's the users that are being condescending.

To that point I wonder if it's worth it to create some videos around user interaction with IT. Like a couple of scenarios from both points of view. One where it looks like the IT pro is talking down to the user, and the other where the IT pro is really just trying to help. Hmmmm

There's been some really good conversations here (thank you all) and what I think could be really interesting is this... Maybe IT people need some soft skills, but maybe there's a need to show the users we support why we appear like we don't have soft skills at times. Maybe, just maybe, it appears that we're lacking in soft skills when really it's the users that are being condescending.

To that point I wonder if it's worth it to create some videos around user interaction with IT. Like a couple of scenarios from both points of view. One where it looks like the IT pro is talking down to the user, and the other where the IT pro is really just trying to help. Hmmmm

@scottalanmiller said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

@animal said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

@momurda said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

Trying not to condescend to users is a tough one; sometimes I am thinking "Youve been using a gd computer for 20 years, 8 hours a day, at least, and you dont know how to do this?" but of course one cant say that.

Haha, but we really do want to say that sometimes. I used to treat everyone like they never saw a computer before.

But in many ways, isn't automatically treating people that way essentially the definition of condescending? It's just that people that need to be condescended to won't notice.

That's the thing about condescension, when you actually do it, the person to whom you are doing it rarely knows it. They typically only notice when you aren't doing it, but they've gotten used to others doing it.

We're getting real deep here now haha. I love the conversations though. I doubt there's a perfect way to talk to someone in our world of IT, as someone else mentioned the very fact that someone doesn't know something you do can appear condescending by the nature of teaching them. I think if you can do the best you can to understand a client's needs (internal or external client) and don't act like a tool then you'll be ok.

@scottalanmiller said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

@momurda said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

Trying not to condescend to users is a tough one; sometimes I am thinking "Youve been using a gd computer for 20 years, 8 hours a day, at least, and you dont know how to do this?" but of course one cant say that.

I found this a lot in online discussions... condescension is hard to define. To one person, speaking to them as a peer and expecting them to be competent is considered being condescending (to people with no clue what condescension is.) To others, and far more legitimately, assuming they can't do their jobs and even politely simplifying things for them is condescension.

Of course, to truly be condescending you have to act superior and be patronizing, and you can avoid that. But people perceive condescension regardless of how you talk to them in many cases.

You touched on a great point here. How do you even know that's how you're being perceived right? Sometimes that's a challenge in itself.

@black3dynamite said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

@animal said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

@black3dynamite said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

Communication is an important one. For me, It took awhile getting comfortable at communicating with users when I first started working in IT.

Thanks for the feedback @black3dynamite - What in particular took a while for you in regards to communication? Just talking to them while working on their machines or in regards to responding to tickets, etc.

I was really shy so just talking with them was a challenge. And that can be either over the phone or in person. Eye contact while talking with them. Responding to emails after the job is done, etc.

Good stuff. I had an intern one time that was really shy and after training him for 4-6 weeks I had him do a presentation in front of 40 people on his experiences. He probably hated me at the time, but now he's a great friend of mine and isn't afraid to talk to people anymore.

@momurda said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

Trying not to condescend to users is a tough one; sometimes I am thinking "Youve been using a gd computer for 20 years, 8 hours a day, at least, and you dont know how to do this?" but of course one cant say that.

Haha, but we really do want to say that sometimes. I used to treat everyone like they never saw a computer before. Now-a-days I think it's different and people think they know what to do on a computer, but sometimes make it worse.

@black3dynamite said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

Communication is an important one. For me, It took awhile getting comfortable at communicating with users when I first started working in IT.

Thanks for the feedback @black3dynamite - What in particular took a while for you in regards to communication? Just talking to them while working on their machines or in regards to responding to tickets, etc.

@jaredbusch said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

@animal said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

Vivid

Isn't/wasn't that was a porn video company?

Haha... I appreciate the great feedback on the topic already. I think I'm seeing a bigger need for these skills than I initially thought

Looks good. Personally I would move the IT Certs at the bottom just above your technical education. Also, I really don't think it's necessary to have your CompTIA id listed, just the cert and the date (and whether it's current or not). You can also put them in a table side-by-side so you can get rid of some of the white space.

Another thing... I just did a post in another discussion around the fact that you should tailor your resume to the job you're looking for. What type of job are you looking to get from this resume?

@dustinb3403 said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

I think you should summarize bedside manner to cuddle in the balls, basically make the employee or customer or whoever the it is feel happy-go-lucky and climax every time they see you regarding whatever issue that they have.

Vivid... seeing a good example forming lol.

@scottalanmiller said in Resume Review Please:

@animal said in Resume Review Please:

@scottalanmiller said in Resume Review Please:

@obsolesce said in Resume Review Please:

@animal

When you leave out unrelated jobs to a position you apply for, the potential employer will notice those gaps. What does that tell them?

This is what I wonder... there is definitely a time to include and definitely a time to exclude. Avoiding gaps is often good, at least back to a certain point. And I like having a "starting point" on there, that shows what that "first job" is. For me this is an extra big deal because my starting job was long ago (1989), a very serious one (solo software engineering intern), and for a great company (Eastman Kodak was #19 on Fortune 100 while I was there.) Lots of people say they've been in IT or whatever and their starting date is based off of "I fixed my family's computer" or working in retail or something.

When I say that I've been in IT or SE for 30 years (technically not for a few more months) lots of people immediately say "we don't count playing with computers at home" and so having a Fortune 19 engineering job on there is pretty important.

I leave off my factory engineering work from a little later, or my restaurant and hotel management experience, and other things from about the same era, those are too unrelated.

Yeah, it makes perfect sense to include jobs that you worked at for a prestigious place, but that can also be done in a cover letter. We never got into the whole cover letter question whether they're worth it or not, but my feeling is that a resume is a bumper sticker, the cover letter is your story.

I've never worked anywhere that even received cover letters. They are normally, in my experience, stripped. I don't know any manager who gets them, or would look at them if received. To me, as a hiring manager, getting a cover letter tells me..

1. The candidate doesn't value their own time and is spending time fruitlessly writing up a cover letter than has nearly zero chance of being seen and nearly zero chance of being read if seen.
2. The candidate is desperate and willing to commit a lot of resources to a job before knowing if it is real at all (most posting by far are not), still open, or something that they'd even consider. It's way, way too early in the process to "care" at all about the potential job.

Yeah, it's definitely a tough call there. I don't typically read them when I get them from candidates either. I really wonder if the resume process and format in general needs an overhaul. Get people thinking about it in a different way rather than making assumptions based on what other people told them. Like, hey, you have to have your name here, your email here, then your objective, work experience like this, etc. I get it, standards are cool, but there has to be a better way!