Soft skills are as important as technical skills – Infosys study

Soft skills are just as important as technical skills in the age of digital transformation, according to a global study by Infosys Knowledge Institute, the research unit of IT outsourcing giant Infosys. The survey found that hard skills are barely enough to survive and thrive as IT becomes less about writing a specification and coding it, but more about finding problems and developing solutions. The study revealed that teamwork is the most in-demand soft skill (in 74% of digital initiatives), followed by leadership (70%), communication (68%), creativity and critical thinking (both at 66%).
The report stressed that teamwork and leadership have become high-value skills “in the current fail-fast environment in which companies are expected to pivot quickly, and employees must embrace agile ways of working and collaborating with others across cultures, customs and time zones.” Meanwhile, the technical skills in great demand for digital initiatives are analytics and user experience (both at 67%), automation (61%), IT architecture including Cloud (59%) and artificial intelligence (58%). The study said analytics, automation and user experience are needed to deliver digital initiative at scale, with big firms requiring lots of them.