Must Have IT Skills

1. Quality Assurance

The quality assurance (QA) process is central to developing software and systems. While QA can be a job in and of itself, many organizations rely on developers, support professionals and others to handle QA. If you don’t know anything about it, you’re shortchanging your career prospects. “I think it’s important for every techie to have a sound QA background,

2. Documentation

Producing documentation isn’t just for technical writers. Support professionals, coders and other IT workers must often document their processes and products for other technology pros, customers and nontechie colleagues. Techies with sharp documentation skills have an edge.

3. Databases

“The database is at the foundation of most software projects,” says Sergio Faissol, director of engineering at AdviceAmerica, a financial planning software company. Therefore, the more you learn about databases, the more you’ll be able to contribute to projects with databases at their center. Support professionals often field calls from nontechnical users about databases, while developers must often design software to work with databases.

4. Networks

Everything is connected, so if you don’t know the basics of networking — and if you can’t even set up (and troubleshoot) your own Wi-Fi network — then you need to familiarize yourself with networking essentials. Lacking knowledge about networks can be a red flag to potential employers. Colarusso says hiring managers have complained to him about programmers who know everything about coding but nothing about networks.

5. HTML

True, you may not be called upon to craft your company’s Web presence, but you never know when your department may need to create and post a Web page. Basic HTML is so easy to learn that not knowing it may raise eyebrows at Web-savvy tech shops.