Updating your Tech Skills…what employers want

So what are you doing to update your tech skills? A lot of what I talk about on this site is dedicated to increasing your non-Tech skills for the betterment of your career. Obviously both technical skills and soft skills are important. During these “Economic Times” it’s crucial to learn new tools and expand your tech skills where you are lacking. Get ready because when the economy bounces back there will be a higher demand for a wide range of skills.

In addition to giving you a look at what employers want, I hoped to give some resources for tools/skills learning and training. In the course of working on this post, I stumbled across a developer training company offering some great deals in a wide range of developer training topics and I wanted to get this out now.  Thus, this will be a two part post.

If you want to get started now

If you are developer and interested in learning more about Microsoft development tools(Visual Studio .NET, Silverlight 2.0, SharPoint, ASP.NET 3 and certification…and on and on) take a look at www.AppDev.com. BTW – These are extremely important tools in the Twin Cities market. Still in high demand, but you need some experience. They offer training (nation wide) on CD, DVD and on-line learning formats. The reason I post this now is they have a special offer running this month, buy 1 get 1 free and a 75+ title full library offering at a reduced rate. Check it out and take advantage while it’s here.

 

I’ll cover all the topics in-depth later, but here is a look my clients’ #1 request..

1. Solid understanding and experience in Object Oriented programming.

• Do you fully understand the core principals of OO programming? I mean do you really get “Objects” and understand Inheritance, Abstraction, Encapsulation, Polymorphism. (not that they ask that on a test. – well I’ve seen it once or twice)
• Have you developed in C++, C# or JAVA ….Or less sought after, but still important Python or Ruby? You were most likely taught a little C++ or Java in college , have you continued your education? What have you created?
• Nothing against PHP (great/easy scripting language) and some other languages with OO features, but that’s not really OO programming.

To really learn and experience these technologies you must apply your skills. There are many small companies (also municipalities, places of worship, and nonprofit organizations) out there in dire need of web / software solutions. Most of my candidates have some side project. It’s part of being a developer. Offer your services (free if you have to) just to get experience on a project. It’s better than being out of a job and letting your skills go to waste.

Here’s list of other technical skills/experience my clients look for. I’ll cover these on the next post. I’ll also list more training/learning sources.

• Backend VS Frontend developer
• Web Based services
• Understanding of Quality Assurance
• XML
• Win and Web Forms
• SQL Database

BTW – In full disclosure I worked at AppDev  5+ years ago. They did Not ask me to promote this latest offer, nor am I getting any compensation for this mention. I just noticed it doing research for this post.  If you have any questions contact me at tavis@techcareertips.com.