Emotions and interpersonal skills for IT professionals: an exploratory study

The development of intellectual capital of corporations represents one of the most significant challenges for today's managers and one of the most fertile fields for business innovation, human resource management and education research. In information technology (IT) field, human capital is a particularly critical issue, due to its knowledge intensive nature. In this scenario, the importance of 'soft skills' in general and 'interpersonal skills' is beyond any doubt. In this paper, interpersonal skills for IT workers are analysed from the point of view of computer science students. The present study consisted of the analysis of the importance which students in the final year of a Computer Engineering degree place on soft skills, particularly, interpersonal skills, for their professional future. In order to achieve this objective, a questionnaire has been applied in which the various interpersonal skills have been characterised with eighteen associated behaviours. Results show two trends. On one hand, the moderate relevance which students assign to interpersonal skills in contrast to professional practice, while on the other hand, the scarce emphasis which lecturers have placed on the development of such skills in contrast to international curricular recommendations.