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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:
Employers in the IT field look for well-rounded new hires. The ideal candidate has strong communication skills, business sense, leadership abilities, consultation skills and broad technical knowledge. Small businesses tend to look for generalists since their positions are less specialized and require a variety of tasks.
| "I don't even know if our technical people need to understand the marketing, so to speak, but they need to understand what they're doing and how it plays into the marketing." | Northeast |
| "We look for three things when we're hiring someone, especially entry-level hires. Raw technical talent is one. Communication skills are second. That's a huge bonus, if you get someone that you know can write well and speak well and is comfortable doing it, because they will automatically be more effective. The third, which we don't always get, is business acumen. People who can sit in a meeting with a customer, and can understand where the customer's coming from. We're lucky if we get that. But communication is critical." | Northeast |
| "I was just going to expand on the other employer's comment on business acumen. When I look at my top performing analysts, it's because they understand the technical concepts, the software development, and the lifecycle concepts. And they can sit at the table with senior leadership and talk to them on their level. They can explain the implications of their decisions, the options they have, and the results of those options at the business level." | Northeast |
| "One thing we struggle with is finding that type of background combined with certain electronics—electrician and IT—all in combination." | Northeast |
| "The new people are going to bring us to the future, and it's harder to find a person with an IT background in manufacturing, I would say." | Northeast |
| "I think it goes back to the re-occurring theme here: You need critical thinking skills and communication skills. Those are really the two big things. Part of me thinks it's just that IT in general attracts more of an isolationist-type person, because people don't get into IT when they're freshmen in college and say, 'Hey, I'm interested in computers.' Most of them started younger and the expectation is, 'It's just me and the computer, it's not a group of people and computers.' It's just an isolationist-type mentality. So, I think that introverts naturally migrate to this industry. I think our focus on teaching communication along with that IT skill set is very, very crucial." | Northeast |
| "People come in from a lot of different angles but, again, the common trade is technical aptitude and business acumen." | Northeast |