- Plan Your Education
- Explore Education Options
- Prepare for College
- Pay for College
- Apply to College
- How to Choose a Major
- Education Search Tools
Employer Quotes
The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Information Technology (IT)
They are talking about this topic: General Skills
The quotes below are about this issue:
Some respondents report that new hires need to possess stronger project management skills, stronger leadership skills, and greater critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.
| "Whether you're from a PMO or from operations, you have to understand how to create efficiencies and add more value. We need to add more value. We're under budget pressure. So, IT employees have to be really strong operations managers in addition to being strong technologists, and this is new. Operations has a lot of training and education on how to be a good operations manager, but I'm not seeing as much in technology." | Metro |
| "We do have a set of leadership competencies that involve having accountability to drive the execution to form strategic partnerships with either internal key stakeholders or external stakeholders. So, we have a very focused approach to how we're hiring leaders." | Metro |
| "We want to have the technical aptitude. We want people who are interested in knowing about multiple things and who are willing to jump in and learn more, whether it's on the technical side or maybe migrate to the project management or the analysis side. What we see happening is that more students are migrating away from some technical aptitude." | Metro |
| "What we need from people who have come in—especially from larger companies—are basic project management skills. And the ability to know what their role is within a project and to play that role without the project going off-track. Or running a project on their own—being able to put together a project plan, identify the risks, and just kind of looking at it beyond the technical problem at hand." | Metro |
| "A great project manager can tell what the problem is that they are trying to solve, and then understand the political environment. In most cases, they don't want to be involved in the 'Where is this going?' decision. They want to be involved in the execution of how they get there, and a good project manager can help to lay that out systematically for them." | Metro |
| "That sense of urgency is something that I think may also be lacking, but a good project manager can drive your team so that those results are in. They get the job done. They are able to motivate the team to do a good job for you. Because an engaged team is going to help you drive those results." | Metro |
| "Employer 1: So, in terms of developing educational programs, it's important for students to have an understanding and respect for project management functions. Because sometimes priorities are going to change, it's just part of real life. So, you can understand the project manager's role in helping turn the boat when it needs to be turned and being adaptable. That's why project management is hard, right? Because things change and assumptions sometimes aren't correct. So, understanding and respecting that function is important. Employer 2: An important part of the curriculum. Employer 3: I think what we see is—and this is the interesting part—students are coming out and they will all tell us that they want to become a project manager. They all tell us that. But once they see what it's really like they're not terribly interested." |
Metro |
| "Those management and relationship skills become ever more important because we are negotiating. We are service providers on a daily basis." | Metro |
| "In technology, we've got to understand finances. We have to balance the budget. We have to provide value. We need to understand how to put a business case together. We have to understand and do risk analysis. Those type of things. Project managers don't grow on trees. Granted, I get a lot of places that want PNP certification in PMI. That tells you the tactical way to run a project. It doesn't give you the soft skills, the finances, the communication skills, and all of those things. Plus, you need 6,000 hours of experience running a project before you can get certified. So, how does somebody out of school get that?" | Metro |
| "There has to be a leader that puts all the pieces together." | Metro |
| "We're looking for someone with that specific training, along with that project management soft-skill side, which means asking the right questions, communicating, and doing what's difficult. I think it's possible." | Metro |
| "To add to your point about the soft skills, we look for very highly-technical individuals, but we also have competencies that we look for—like strategic agility, the intellectual horsepower, and leadership—so, that's very important. That's something that we're seeing a lack of." | Metro |
| "Equally important, if not more so, are the soft skills around better management negotiation—leadership and management competencies that used to be important, but are even more important going forward." | Metro |
| "We break down our leadership competencies into four major groups: thought leadership, results leadership, people leadership, and personal leadership. Underneath that there are 13 competencies with robust definitions. So, we evaluate candidates on all four of those areas. How well do they collaborate? What's their learning agility? What kind of personal integrity and internal standards do they demonstrate? What's their ability to be strategic and to be thoughtful—business acumen? It all falls in there. The technical skills are certainly important, but we have challenges finding candidates that really round-out nicely to fill all four of these competencies. So, really, one of the things I was hoping to put on the table today was that we need those fully-rounded candidates that are taught the leadership skills and the soft skills alongside the technical." | Metro |
| "In the technical—maybe the two-year—program, they have fairly good breadth on the technical focus. But the business or social skills—how to interact with a customer—they lack some of those basic things." | Southwest |
| "We're looking for people with degrees who can manage budgets, communicate, work with teams, and do project management." | Southwest |