Key Strategies on How to Advance Your Digital Tech Career

The digital technology market is highly saturated and competitive, and to survive there, you need to succeed. Tech employers constantly seek IT professionals with the latest industry knowledge and expertise due to interconnected reasons: digital technology companies compete in international markets with each other, thus they need to be adaptive and constantly introduce new products and features to remain competitive. For every person working in the IT sector, it’s crucial to be up-to-date with the latest and most influential innovations and trends in their industry, read professional literature, and constantly develop new skills. What main skills have the most value in the digital tech market? What is the perfect ratio between hard and soft skills?

Hard Skills vs Soft Skills

Each employee's role is specific to different areas of digital technology, and it is difficult to determine the exact ideal balance between hard and soft skills. However, on average, I would say that for technical roles, the percentage of hard skills is approximately 60-70 percent and 30-40 percent for soft skills. But for managerial roles, on the contrary, hard skills should be slightly less than 50 percent. Among the most important soft skills are clear communication, adaptability, critical and strategic thinking, and time management. Therefore, if your goal is to advance your career in leadership positions, it’s better to concentrate on polishing your soft skills, or, alternatively, try to achieve an equal balance of hard and soft skills through continuous development in both areas which can lead to a greater career success.  

Set Your Long-Term Goal

Start from the ultimate goal: what would you like to achieve? Set clear goals for yourself, and try to create a proper roadmap by assessing your existing skills and qualifications, and determining the skills and qualifications you would like to achieve within a year. Your long-term goal should be achievable by short-term measurable objectives. I would even suggest creating a clear timeline using any of the project management tools (such as Notion, MindMeister, Trello, Miro, or even Excalidraw or Google Sheets), identifying milestones with short-term, measurable objectives, and tracking progress. 

Tips for Career Success

Here are some tips on how to properly strategize your career growth:  

1. Start with your main interest: would you like to grow in a specific field within the tech industry? Define the sphere of your interests: Web3, gaming, AI, fintech, etc. Some spheres definitely should resonate with your hobbies and interests, and you need to start exploring the growing opportunities within your selected field. 
2. After defining your interests, imagine what the ideal career path would be for you in the selected field: manager, lead, director, or C-level executive. 
3. Don’t stop learning and developing your professional hard skills. If you are a software developer in fintech and want to switch fields to Web3, start learning smart contract languages such as Solidity, Vyper, Rust, or Move. Dreaming of a career in AI development? Learn languages such as Python, R, MATLAB, Scala, and more. Try to allocate your working time wisely. Be transparent about your short-term and medium-term career goals and objectives with your manager. Many tech companies have learning and development budgets, so if you want to upgrade your knowledge and learn any programming language from scratch, ask your manager. In general, project managers, tech leads, and C-level executives appreciate it when tech professionals grow and develop their skill sets rather than just executing their tasks. Don’t undervalue or underestimate your abilities, constantly evolve your professional technical knowledge and skills. Attending a tech boot camp, completing a comprehensive certified course, or even receiving an advanced degree could strengthen your portfolio.
4. Master your leadership skills. Learn from your team lead by shadowing them for several hours a week. Ask them to join a cross-functional project or experimental growth team to deliver specific tasks. Observe leaders’ styles on Slack to understand their approaches, soft skills, and techniques of inspiration. Focus on developing your interpersonal skills. Polish your leadership and emotional skills within your company.
5. Build your personal brand. It’s a common misconception that tech professionals shouldn’t care about their personal brand: it’s not just for coaches, beauty influencers, and business people. By developing your LinkedIn profile, you will be more visible to tech headhunters, making it easier with your LinkedIn "life" profile to pursue your dream career. Tech professionals market themselves on LinkedIn, being vocal and visible. Search for industry influencers and expert in your areas of interest, share their content, and comment on their posts if you find them interesting. Evolve your LinkedIn profile, update it, and make new connections in your industry or industry you would like to work for in the future, don’t forget to upload certifications you achieved, skills you’ve gained, and takeaways you’ve read and learned from different industry articles.
6. Don’t underestimate networking and mentoring options. Attend tech events and join professional online communities on social media platforms (Stack Overview, GitHub, Reddit). Become both a mentor and a mentee on one of the mentorship platforms. As a mentee, you can learn a lot from the industry leaders, and as a mentor, you can share tips and tricks with mentees on how to excel in your job. You can’t imagine how helpful you can be for people working in completely different industries until you try. Thus, by staying updated with the latest trends, becoming familiar with startup ideas and their development paths, and evaluating yourself objectively, you can determine who you want to become in the long term. Last but not least, this approach can lead to collaborative projects and job referrals.  
7. Collaborate and communicate effectively with colleagues from different departments. I noticed that sometimes in tech companies there is an invisible wall of misunderstanding between business verticals, tech professionals, and developers. Often, international tech companies operate on the main principles showcased in the Game of Thrones series: political maneuvring, alliances and conflicts, the nature of leadership and ethics, and product legacy. Who are you in this tech world: a visionary like Tywin Lannister, a spokesperson like Tyrion Lannister, an observer like Bran Stark, or a warrior like Jon Snow? Identify your key strengths and valuable qualities for the company, and try to establish yourself as an indispensable employee in your particular professional field. No matter who you are in the tech world, you will still need to learn and acquire such skills as practicing patience, and adaptability. Evaluate your work through the prism of clearly defined OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), not only for yourself but also for your team, project, or department. Additionally, the better you understand a company's key OKRs, the more the barrier between the business pillar and the tech pillar decreases.

Conclusion

And last but not least, don’t be afraid of professional challenges. In a fast-paced tech environment, difficulties or even failures are inevitable. Stay calm, carry on, and search for growth opportunities. Whether you are shifting from one profession to another, or continuing your career tech journey, these tips can help you to become more confident in yourself and your goals. Career development in the tech industry always requires a combination of technical and soft skills, confidence in your skill set and personal brand, the ability to see the perspectives, and a desire (even a small one) to revolutionize the industry.