This week in the Careers section, we reflected on the soft skills you need to succeed in engineering and more.
If you are a regular Careers section reader you are probably already very familiar with the importance of soft skills. Having technical knowledge will only get you so far in this working world, especially now that the new tenets of the future of work are beginning to shape it.
A lot of tech roles are now more customer-facing than ever, such as Lucy Lu’s role as a technical support engineer at New Relic. She needs to be fluent in New Relic technology, sure, but her job wouldn’t be possible if she wasn’t able to successfully work with her peers.
“My team and I work together to solve some tough problems and collaborate to find solutions for our customers,” Lu explained. “I feel lucky to work in a place where collaboration is so important. I can always learn something new from my team and am constantly growing in my knowledge and experience.”
So, not only does collaboration help Lu do her job to the best of her ability, but it actually aids her professional growth. This may be a skill you’re neglecting in your engineering career, so it is worth your while looking into it.
We also caught up with Mastercard’s Eduardo Andrade to hear more about his fascinating role building a blockchain and working with a modern Java development platform. He explained that his software development experience gave him the transferable skills he needed to succeed in this new role.
We spoke to MSD’s Ger O’Donovan about why she feels that graduate programmes should be more general across STEM industries. Her argument is that they provide an opportunity for people to get their foot in the door, and the structure and mentorship is vital to ensuring success.
In jobs announcements, there was a huge reveal from life sciences giant Johnson & Johnson, specifically its subsidiary Vision Care. It announced 100 new jobs at its Limerick facility as part of a staggering €100m investment.
Also hiring is professional services firm PwC, which is recruiting 40 new hires in Galway as it moves to a new state-of-the-art city centre location.
Finally, financial services company AFEX announced 10 new Dublin jobs to ensure it can continue to provide its services post-Brexit.
For more on any of these stories, check out the links above.
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