Key Traits of a Successful IT Professional

What makes a successful IT professional? Here are six traits one must possess to enjoy a career in this highly-competitive field.

Adaptable

If you favor a fixed routine with few interruptions and a high level of predictability, IT may not be for you. Things can change minute-to-minute. Throughout the day – a server might crash, a drive might fail or an employee may accidentally delete a file. Change often necessitates the adoption of new technologies or adaptations to existing ones. Good IT professionals understand this and adapt quickly.

Analytical

In the world of IT, something is either true or false. There is little room for conjecture. Finding the answer to a particular question requires the ability to carefully analyze known information. A person who kicks a machine until it begins to work isn’t analytical and unlikely to make a good IT professional.

Curious

Curiosity about the way things work is a significant component of the analytical mind. Most successful IT professionals are bothered when a problem is resolved without a clear reason why. An accountant might say “Let it go, we have better things to spend time on.” This is appropriate in terms of budget, but the ever-curious IT person is unlikely to drop the issue until the answer is discovered.

Planner

Careful planning is a vital part of a successful software and infrastructure implementation. Those that ‘wing it’ almost always fail. To be successful in IT, one must embrace the need to carefully lay out a roadmap to success and plan so that nothing is left to chance or hope. Staffing firms that place IT professionals look for the ability to plan as an essential trait.

Good Communicator

The stereotype of IT people as geeks able to quickly master a programming language while possessing poor communication skills is simply not true. IT professionals build and manage tools for everyday use. It is difficult to thrive in IT without the ability to effectively communicate to understand needs and explain how tools work in a way everyone can understand.

Team Player

Business is a collaborative effort with partners, clients, suppliers and co-workers. As with all successful members of any business endeavor, the IT professional should possess the capacity to play well in a team.

 

Interested in jump-starting your career and becoming a successful IT professional? Let the professionals at Snelling Staffing help. Contact your local office today!