Most Important Soft Skills You Should Look for in a Developer

It's very likely that you hired the majority of your engineers based on their ability to successfully develop the tools your business needs to function or the applications you want to offer to customers. This skill directly depends on their aptitude for specific languages ​​and frameworks aimed at the projects for which they were hired.

However, if your hiring practices are based solely on programming skills, you're probably missing out on some excellent candidates. That, or you could end up hiring someone with incredible knowledge of any language, but who lacks many of the other “soft” skills needed to work in your company or on a team.

What is a “soft” skill?

Interpersonal skills are often called common or core skills and are personality traits and characteristics rooted in a person's behavior and attitude. While these skills are not as quantifiable as soft skills (like knowledge of a specific programming language), they are equally valuable and, for the most part, have a very positive impact on productivity and interaction with other team members. team.

Now that you know what an interpersonal skill is, what should you look for when hiring new software engineers? Let's take a look at some of the most important soft skills you should aim for.

Communication

If your developers can't communicate well, they won't be able to work as a team, exchange ideas with stakeholders, explain problems they discover in the design or code, or be part of the project's bug fixing or marketing efforts. Communication skills are absolutely essential for any team member.

This is especially true considering how many companies have opted for a remote work environment. Therefore, meetings are now held via Zoom (or other platforms), where team members can make themselves available to communicate problems or collaborate. With effective communication, a team member is better able to help shorten the project lifecycle and make everything run more efficiently.

Collaboration and teamwork

It goes without saying that your developers must have these soft skills. Without the ability to collaborate and work effectively as a team, these employees will be challenged to function and help bring the project to fruition. To be a good team player, a contractor needs to be able and willing to go above and beyond what is asked of them and take whatever steps are necessary to help their team get the job done.

This collaboration should go beyond sharing code on GitHub and helping with debugging. These team members must be able to share and receive advice from those above them, below them, and at the same level. Additionally, team members must also respect the work, ethics, and needs of their fellow developers.

Time Management and Organization

If your developers can't handle time management effectively, they will have trouble meeting deadlines. The same applies to your organizational skills. Both traits can greatly help developers become effective and productive team members.

When someone works with a teammate who has effective time management skills, they know they can count on them to do their share of the work. Without these skills, teammates will become frustrated and have to constantly compensate those who can't manage their time.

Emotional intelligence

When you hire a developer with solid emotional intelligence, you hire someone with the ability to successfully absorb and interpret not only their own emotions, but also the emotions of others. With this skill, a developer is better able to deal with the inevitable emotional pressure that often accompanies developers.

Deadlines approach, pressure increases, tempers rise. With a high level of emotional intelligence, a developer is better able to handle anything that comes their way without breaking down or lashing out. A big part of emotional intelligence is having strong active listening skills. A person who can actively listen to another is able to process what they experience in a productive and efficient way.

Culpability

Things go wrong. This is inevitable. When something goes wrong (whether it's a code error or a missed deadline), the last thing you need to deal with is a team of developers playing the “blame game”. You need to hire developers who are willing to admit their mistakes so the team can move forward, resolve the issue, and meet the deadline.

Without blame, you will find employees spending a lot of time pointing blame at others. Your engineers must understand that it's okay to admit mistakes and (except in extreme circumstances) that they won't lose their jobs for accepting responsibility.

Creative problem solving

Some problems are easily solved with logic and reason. This is especially true in the domain of software development. But every now and then a creative solution will not only solve the problem but also yield an even better end result.

Creative people do creative work. If you want a development team that is capable of pushing boundaries and thinking well outside the box of standard problems, you need to look for developers who can solve problems creatively.

Adaptability and Versatility

If you hire someone who is rigid and unable to adapt to different circumstances, you will find that you have hired a developer who will hinder progress. Not everything goes as planned and Murphy's law never stops rearing its ugly head.

When a project goes off the rails, you need developers who can keep up with the changes thrown at them through changing needs, an issue that arises in the code presented by another team member, or an issue that arises with a broken API. By hiring adaptable and versatile developers, you can be sure that these projects will be completed no matter what.

Patience

Things don't always happen overnight. Sometimes a project is on hold while waiting for work from a team or third party. When this happens, your developers need to show patience. Just because one team member got to the finish line long before the others doesn't mean they can rush the work and expect it to be quality.

Each team member must understand that not all developers work at the same pace. Furthermore, once the project is out of the hands of the developers and into the hands of, say, marketing or administration, they will have to seriously exercise patience.

This is especially true in the DevOps domain, where more than just developers are working on a project. Those in operations may not fully understand a problem as quickly as a developer, so patience (as they say) will be a virtue.

Conclusion

Remember, coding isn't the only skill your employees should have. Yes, it's probably best to give higher priority to skills that will have an immediate and direct impact on a project, but you should never underestimate these soft skills that can make an employee more effective, efficient, productive and easier to work with.