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What does the profile of a well-rounded technical candidate look like? The kind of candidate technical employers want to interview, and  the kind of person IT staffers want to get on the phone. The answer is that what’s timeless in an ever-changing industry is a constellation of skills with strong technical ability central. The skillset required by top technical employers is threefold: cognitive, emotional & social. A highly technically proficient candidate could easily miss out on emotional intelligence due to a preference to sit alone at a desk coding rather than socializing. While this personality trait is a key determinant of a candidate in the technology industry, versus an industry like sales that is social-centric, taken to an extreme, it can limit an intelligent candidate’s ability to be upwardly mobile. The successful technical candidate needs to invest some time and energy into building effective communication skills, have the ability to negotiate compromises, and solve interpersonal challenges. These abilities are what make technical candidates part of a team, rather than just a set of accomplishments and skills.

Technical candidates who possess a well-rounded balance of skills can both complete their job responsiblities and articulate company agendas when necessary. Technical recruiting firms will always make time to interview and place technical candidates at this performance level. These types of candidates can rise to leadership positions, and fulfill the interpersonal aspects of those roles competently. The synthesis of these skills with a good educational grounding in technical abilities, and the drive to stay on top of new developments in the industry, and train to keep pace with them, is what makes an efficient and irreplaceable member of a technical team.