Job Skills - was [Re: Tech-support Hall of Shame]

[Lucas Peet]

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Paul Taylor wrote:
| From the information some of you pour out in this forum, most of YOU
| have much more experience than my friends above. My only conclusion is
| either sub-communication skills or not so great personal skills.

And herein lays the key.  The reason, I believe that so many highly
skilled geeks are having it rough finding work, is because of a
perceived social class.

#1.  Geeks weren't liked much in High School / College - they weren't in
the 'in' group.  They'd rather play chess than play football.

#2.  Because of this, Geeks tend to keep to them selves, or at least
used to.  This resulted in fewer social skills, other than being able to
'talk geek' with other geeks.

Employers are looking for the 'average' person who has the skills to do
the job - not necessarily a 'geek', but someone who went through school,
said "I want to make money.  IT is for me." and got the degree.
Straight out of school, they're you're regular schmoe, but with the
skill set the employers are looking for.

They're the ones who'll go out to the bars after work on Fridays and
have a good time talking about stuff *other than computers* and watching
the 'big game' rather than going home to finish building out their next
5 machines to add to their 10 machine Beowulf cluster running SETI at Home
in hopes of being 'the One' who find's ET first.

Geeks 'in general' (I know, I know, yes, it is a stereotype) have pretty
poor social skills with others who aren't 'geeks' or can't answer in
binary/HEX when they ask for the time.  Social skills are just as big of
a requirement as being able to administer 50+ production Sun/Linux
boxes, or be able to code the company's Intranet CMS in PHP from
scratch.  They're all equal in the eyes of the employer.  Which is why
many times, you'll interview with 2 (or more) people at once - one who
is versed in the technical details, and the other in the social details.
~ Together they make the decision whether or not to push the request to
HR and bring you on board.

Social skills are extremely important in the job search/hiring process,
and even if you are exactly what they're looking for, there's someone
else out there who is also exactly what they're looking for, but with
wonderful social skills who'll actually get the job.

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