Is communication skills important for technical students

Introduction

This is the most biggest myth which needs to be busted. I'll try to answer this question to my best knowledge possible. I can understand this question too as I'm also from technical background. Technical skills is something we can achieve through applied Computer Science knowledge. But communication skills is something which also needs to be taken utmost care of too. Let me explain you with some use cases.

Use cases

Use Case 1: You're poor in technical skills. You're not having knowledge of the skills & expertise which the opportunity demands in the JD .Addition to it, you lack proper Communication skills. Will you be able to crack HR & technical interviews?

Use Case 2: You're a technical candidate with good knowledge of technicalities and the skills you've studied. Have build some projects in them too. But you lack some knowledge of formal behavior & communication skills. Do you think you'll have confidence to clear interviews?

Use Case 3: You're a CS student with good technical knowledge, have good amount of projects in all the skills mentioned in JD and you've more to average communication skills. Will you be able to clear the interview and made it to your Offer Letter?

Your answer to above questions will reflect your mindset for the question of our topic. We'll get back to this question again at the end. Now, let's discuss my Point of View as of now.

Why Communication Skills is also important for technical students?

Technical students, to whom I'm mostly referring to as are candidates from CS background. First let us have some intro about communication skills and it's types.

Communication is defined as the ability to convey or share ideas and feelings effectively. Following are it's some of the types:

1. Written And Oral Communication : Normal communication via
2. Presentation : Present yourself or your work via verbal means
3. Active Listening : Listening is most important task for any human being. You can't give output if you're not taking any input right !
4. Nonverbal Communication : What if you want to convey something without uttering a word? You'll use hand gestures, facial expressions, loudness/shrinkness of voice etc.
5. Feedback : It's the last stage of communication. Even Google asks feedback after translating a sentence from one language to another.
6. Respect : Yes, it's old Indian truth to respect person you're talking. They'll engage more if you give them respect rather disrespecting them.
7. Confidence : As most people say, Confidence is the key to success person. Even after you're running your first print('Hello World') program.
8. Clarity : What if your program don't have any comments? It doesn't have a clarity what exactly you're doing. You can't display your output in every single code(It's not compatible as per company level standard).
9. Honesty : Aaah, it's something you must be having in your words & actions - honesty.
10. Friendliness : Of course, it's almost same as Respect. But it's beyond to it. It helps others receive your message more readily as it makes the communication like informal one which ultimately makes the sense of trust.

How to improve?

1. Learn to Listen: As Sandeep Maheshwari sir said in this video, "Silence is the best answer, even if you're silent, you're trying to convey something to the other person." It's half of the communication process. If you'll not listen to the problem statement, how will you solve the problem? How will you know which data structure to implement ! You'll always chose a person who listens to you rather than a person who always tells you about himself, should practice listening for this reason.

2. Notice Non-verbal cues: Non-verbal accounts to 93% of the impact of any verbal message. Of course non-verbal adds more meaning to your verbal communication. It's not an easy task, but appending particular code to a function makes sense right?

3. Practice Oral communication: You can never be too good at speaking. This is mainly because we take our oral skills for granted. Having used words our entire lives, we rarely stop to wonder whether our verbal communication is effective. Instead, we tend to blame the listener for not understanding or just assume that we have different opinions.

4. Match your communication skills to the job: Check the job description with an eye out for any communication skills highlighted in the requirements. Out of the many communication sub-skills, only list the ones that are relevant to the job you’re applying for on your resume.

5. Use the job interview to your advantage: The thing with most communication skills is, they’re more convincing when you show instead of just tell. So, listing “confidence,” “friendliness” or “oral communication” on your resume won’t yield as many results as being confident and reasonably friendly during the interview, or proving that your oral communication is on-point.

6. Keep it up after you’re hired: Getting the job doesn’t mean you stop working on your communication skills. On the contrary, the workplace is where they will really be put to the test - by colleagues, supervisors, and clients/customers alike. So keep practicing your communication skills at work and don’t miss a chance to showcase them by being an active listener at meetings, respectful towards your colleagues, and open to accepting and providing feedback!

Just for interview?

Not at all. Don't just use communication skills like your course subject. It's a subject which is related to your whole life.

• Practice for your self confidence
• Will help you in increasing your connections which'll ultimately help you in long run(maybe getting referrals LOL).
• Will help you in attending meetings and help communicate better with your colleagues. They'll more effectively understand you better.
• You're going to attend sessions and meeting with your clients as well. They maybe from foreign like in most MNC's. How are going to interact if you know li'l about their language or thoughts? Non-verbal? Yes.
• Writing competitive exams? Got OA (Online Assessment) link, but you haven't paid attention to the very first page - instructions page. Lack of communication is seen here. Clarity is not seen in how to answer questions.

Additional points

Is there anything I'm missing out? I've tried my best to make you understand the context in simple words with familiar examples whenever needed. I've got many few videos on this topic on YouTube. The same question was mine too & I've got some resources but they're not linked to technical field. Let us get to the same question again. Refer to the use cases above & answer the questions again. Are your answers changed ? Are you able to understand now how much important is communication skills for CS students?

Comment down your best pick from this article. Which branch are you in? Have you gained anything from this article? I'm Nitin Kumar. Thanks for reading.

[Happy Hacking]