5 Non-technical Skills You Must Possess

Gain immediate access to live Cisco routers, over 60 hours of streaming videos, exams, flash cards, over 1500 pages of theory and labs, a Cisco discussion forum and much more - Start Your 7 Day Trial for only $1 .

Since 2006 companies and individuals have trusted us to deliver their training needs

redbull

rbs

att

cisco

usarmy

dell

microsoft

home | Feature Articles | 5 Non-technical Skills You Must Poss . . .

5 Non-technical Skills You Must Possess

I have worked with many an IT engineer. I can divide them
into three very broad categories:

Super technical

Fairly technical

Not technical at all

and three personality types:

Very poor interpersonal skills

Does what is needed but no more

Great fun to work with

And of course you can mix and match. Getting a super
technical person who is also great fun to work with is
fairly rare to be honest but it does happen.

I have worked with all sorts but the ones who stand out
are the uuber geeks who can read hex like it is a Harry
Potter novel and quote all the RFCs but you wouldn't put
them in front of a customer in a million years.

The others were ones who made work fun and did their job
to the best of their ability. They could be pretty
technical but it was more their attitude which makes them
stand out in my mind.

This brings me onto skills I feel you will need to make
a success of your IT career as far as being good at your
job is concerned.

1. Touch typing - I know this is not a technical skill but
if you look at a network engineer typing away with one
finger on each hand, the customer begins to sweat. Being
able to touch type at a reasonable speed means you can
configure and fix things much faster.

When it comes to your CCIE lab you had better be able to
type fast my friend because 8 hours flys by in a flash.

2. Google - answers to 99% of your problems can be found
on the web in the form of white papers or forum questions
and answers. Even at Cisco TAC, with an absolutely huge
repository of information we often ended up checking
Google for answers to questions.

3. An enquiring mind - great if you can configure frame
relay but if you have an enquiring mind you will want to
understand how it actually works. Where do the lmi's fit in
and what happens between your router and the frame relay
switch?

You will want to set stuff up in your own lab, break it
and then fix it over and over.

Don't get caught up in too much off topic stuff if you
have an exam coming up but most every good network
engineer is good at lots of stuff but has a very in
depth knowledge of certain technologies they find
interesting personally.

4. Sense of humor - this is vital. When your backbone
goes down at 17:00 Friday evening you will need to take
quick action but also be able to keep a sense of humor
about it. Be appropriate of course but I've seen grown
men scream and cry when there is a network fault!

5. Be a people person - I know this is hard for many of
us, especially if we are very technical. Unless you want
to stay locked in the basement with all the geeks you need
to work on your verbal, listening and interpersonal skills.

I know of one CCIE who is actually left in a basement, he
can fix anything, anytime but the company would never ever
let him in front of a customer. He can barely speak to his
own colleagues.

When all is said and done, we will look back and remember
the relationships we have had with others rather than the
great configs we wrote.

Paul Browning

Customer Comment or reviews

	7 Comment or reviews
5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Comment or review