23/10-09   -   Press releases

Soft skills are overrated; industry expertise almost always an advantage

Hanover, Germany – October 23, 2009 – Soft skills are less critical for the job opportunities of IT professionals than is often claimed. Industry skills, on the other hand, are almost always seen as a major asset. These are the key findings of the IT Skills Study 2009 undertaken by skills management specialists at the software and consulting firm Data Assessment Solutions. The study is unique in its application of quantitative statistical methods used in market research to assess the value of various IT skills.

IT specialists with average social and self-organisation skills are unlikely to find that improving their soft skills will have a huge impact on their career prospects. In fact, their market value will be enhanced much more if they can offer specific industry expertise. In the insurance IT sector this could, for example, be knowledge about the settlement of claims.

The findings of a pair-wise comparison of IT skills profiles based on the conjoint analysis methodology which is well established in market research shows that IT specialists who are able to offer a combination of technical and business skills are very much in demand.

The data was polled from IT professionals exhibiting at or visiting CeBIT 2009 and evaluated at the Friedrich Schiller University’s Institute for Computer Sciences in Jena. Professor Joachim Giesen, Professor of Theoretical Informatics II at the University and the study’s scientific director, expressed his surprise about two of the findings:

“I certainly hadn´t expected the results to be as homogeneous as they are. There really does appear to be considerable consensus about the types of skills and expertise today’s IT employees are expected to offer," Giesen explains.

“It was also unusual to find that respondents’ decision behaviour was not dominated by any one particular attribute. In most cases, deficits in one area could be compensated for by specialist knowledge in another field. In other words, it´s the overall impression that counts most. This was never previously apparent in any of our earlier conjoint studies."

More information
The IT Skills Study 2009 can be downloaded at http://www.data-assessment.com/en/Skills2009 (PDF file).

IT skills calculator
Data Assessment Solutions provides an IT skills calculator (which can also be accessed at http://www.data-assessment.com/en/Skills2009) that can be used to find out what utility values the study participants would assign to your or your employees’ skills. The tool can be used to generate and compare two arbitrary skills profiles and immediately shows which skills most enhance employees’ or candidates’ market value.

Data Assessment Solutions
Data Assessment Solutions GmbH is a software and consulting firm which specialises in the field of IT skills management. Its decídalo solution provides companies with powerful functionality and a comprehensive database of IT skills and roles.

Contacts
Dr. Axel Völker
Data Assessment Solutions GmbH
Expo Plaza 3
30539 Hanover
Germany
Tel.: +49 511 5905715
Fax: +49 511 59029894
E-mail: info@data-assessment.com
Internet: http://www.data-assessment.com

Peter Verclas
verclas & friends kommunikationsberatung gmbh
Gaisbergstraße 16
69115 Heidelberg
Germany
Tel.: +49 6221 58787-35
Fax: +49 6221 58787-39
E-mail: peter.verclas@verclas-friends.de
Internet: http://www.verclas-friends.de