🌈 🌏 🧡 Who is a mentor and what kind of flexible skills should he have 🏼 🐆 🛋️

In one of the recent Habr Career surveys, we found out that almost half of IT professionals plan to change jobs in the near future. The loyalty index of such employees was minus 46, while for those who did not plan to change jobs - plus 28.

Among other things, we asked if your company had mentoring. Looking separately at those who do not have mentoring, we found that their loyalty index is minus 41. That is, respondents were close to changing jobs in the near future.

In our opinion, the information received is critically important for the employer. If he understands what mentoring is and how it works, learns to implement it and manage it, he will receive loyal motivated employees, reduce turnover and reduce the costs of recruiting and adaptation.

Therefore, today we will slightly deepen our understanding of mentoring: we will share the analytics of our new survey, which we recently conducted together with Yandex.Practicum.

Let's see which soft skills are considered the most important for working in IT, which ones are more common and which are less common. We will clarify who such a mentor is, what skills he should possess and how widespread mentoring is. We’ll see what kind of flexible skills they expect from the Jones and how they evaluate them at the interview. Finally, we’ll find out if you can learn flexible skills and mentoring.

Who participated in the survey

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Understanding Flexible Skills

To begin with, we asked the survey participants to determine what each of the eight proposed flexible skills for them personally means, you could choose as many answers as you like. Understanding of skills was distributed as follows:

1. Responsibility

Comply with deadlines and arrangements (70%)
Willingness to admit your mistake (70%)
Do not blame other team members (65%)

2. Teamwork

Find a common language with team members (85%)
Be able to negotiate and negotiate (63%)
Be able to give feedback (53%)

3. Communication skill

To be able to convey their thoughts so that they understand you (72%)
Be able to build and maintain relationships (64%)
Ability to listen to others and understand them (63%)

4. Flexibility

Find and make decisions when something goes wrong (71%)
Ability to make compromise decisions (66%)
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Next, we asked to evaluate how each flexible skill is important for working in IT, rating it from 1 - is not important at all, to 5 - is extremely important, and received the following weighted average ratings.

The most important skills were responsibility, teamwork and communication skills, while the most unimportant ones were creativity, leadership skills and emotional intelligence. This hierarchy of skills for working in IT in general: a little further we will see that for mentors, for example, the hierarchy will be completely different.

As it turned out, this hierarchy of skills does not depend on specialization, qualifications, remoteness of work, type of company in which the specialist works.

Only for operating professionals, designers, and freelance customers, customer focus is just above flexibility. And for designers, emotional intelligence is still higher than creativity (by the way, curious).

The rarity of flexible skills

Next, we asked which skill is most common in IT, and which is the rarest.

As you can see, teamwork in the hierarchy of importance of skills is in second place, and in frequency of occurrence - in the first. Responsibility in importance comes first, and in frequency in fourth place. Communication skills are in third place in importance, but only in sixth in frequency of occurrence.

That is, if you will not surprise anyone with the ability to work in a team, because who often knows how, then responsibility and especially communication skills should be especially appreciated by others - you will not often meet these critical skills for working in IT.

The frequency of occurrence of the skill does not depend on qualifications at all and almost does not depend on the field of activity, remoteness of work and type of company.

Only in front-end and in dextop development, as well as in administration, is flexibility more common than creativity. And in testing, analytics, and HR, responsibility is found a little more often than flexibility.

On the remote and in outsourcing companies, flexibility is found a little more often than creativity. In consulting companies, creativity is more often than teamwork. In state-owned companies, responsibility is more often than creativity.

It is least likely to occur, and he is the last most important skill - emotional intelligence. Communication skill is in second place in rarity, although in importance this skill is among the top three.

And if IT specialists are ready to live without emotional intelligence, then there is no way without communication: we reaffirm that specialists with communication skills will be appreciated: they are rare, but their skill is extremely important.

The rarity of the skill does not depend on remoteness of work at all and weakly depends on the field of activity, qualifications and type of company.

Only in desktop development, customer focus is a slightly rarer skill than communication skill. In design, responsibility is less than communication. In administration and management - flexibility is less than responsibility.

For timlids and seniors, customer focus is slightly less common in communication skills. Timlids have less responsibility than leadership.

In a state-owned company, creativity is less common than customer focus. In freelance, flexibility and leadership qualities are less common than customer focus.

Prevalence of Mentoring

We also clarified the understanding of mentoring through a question with several answers, from which you could choose any. And they got that a mentor is someone who:

Teaches juniors and helps them with difficult tasks (78%)
Helps new employees get used to it (70%)
Defines goals for further development (54%)

It turned out that mentoring is quite widespread in IT. Almost all respondents know who the mentors are, the vast majority believe that there should be mentors in their team, just over half said that there are mentors in their companies.

At the same time, 52% called themselves mentors, 36% said that they have a mentor. It is curious that 14% combine both roles: they themselves are mentors and they also have a mentor at the same time.

We will look further at how mentoring is widespread, depending on qualifications, specialization, type of company and distance of work.

As expected, the higher the qualification of a specialist, the more often he is a mentor, and the less often he has his own mentor. The middles have the most who have a mentor and have a mentor.

Most of all mentors in management and full-stack development, and least of all in mobile and front-end development. In design, most of those who are a mentor and have a mentor.

Mentors are most in freelance, and least in state-owned companies. In freelance, there are also more of those who have a mentor and who have a mentor.

There are more mentors among remote managers than among those working in the office.

Mentor Skills

What kind of flexible skills should a mentor have? You could choose as many options as you like.

So, the mentors are expected, first of all, communication skills, which is one of the most important for working in IT, and at the same time it is one of the rarest skills. They also expect emotional intelligence and leadership qualities that are generally considered not the most important in IT, but are less common than others.

These expectations from mentors in no way depend on the remoteness of work and weakly depend on the scope of activity and type of company.

So, developers and administrators, as well as employees of consulting companies, expect leadership qualities from mentors more often than emotional intelligence. And for testers, responsibility is more often than leadership qualities.

In consulting and state-owned companies, teamwork is more often than responsibility.

Evaluation of flexible skills in the June interviews

We learned that mentors are those who teach the dzhuns, help them get used to a new job, and determine their goals for further development.

Now let's see how the June interviews go. About 60% of the respondents participated in the interview of new employees, and 85% of them interviewed the Joons.

80% of those who interviewed the Juns noted that they appreciate flexible skills at an interview, and 27% of them may refuse a candidate with hard skills if he clearly lacks flexible skills.

We see that first of all, the same skills that are considered the most important for working in IT are expected from the jones: responsibility, teamwork and communication skills.

These expectations do not depend on the remoteness of work and the type of company, and are weakly dependent on the field of activity.

So, for front-end tenders, full-stacks and analysts, communication skills are expected from the jones more often than teamwork, and designers more often than responsibility. (Again, the skill of communication, by the way).

We decided to find out if there are any generally accepted ways of assessing flexible skills in an interview. And that's what they got.

One in three evaluates flexible skills in the course of a regular conversation or interview, without specifying how exactly this process goes, what kind of questions are asked. One in ten relies on the overall impression of the candidate and their intuition.

However, an unexpectedly large proportion of those who describe a specific assessment methodology, albeit fuzzy structuring it, but revealing the main meaning of the procedure. Among those dominated by those who build interviews on the analysis of specific cases, situations and projects. They are followed by those who test the candidate’s reaction and behavior to acute or problem situations.

Flexible skills training

There is an opinion that, unlike hard skills, flexible skills are difficult or almost impossible to specifically learn. However, when asked whether an employer should invest in flexible skills training, we received the following answer.

Two-thirds of those surveyed believe that employers should invest in flexible skills training. It is curious that a quarter of respondents find it difficult to answer.

Half believe that the employer should organize flexible skills training once every six months, a third - once a month.

Yandex.Practicum believes that it is possible and necessary to teach flexible skills, and from March 2, 2020 launches a free mentoring school. Filing applications by February 24th. View details and sign up .

Main conclusions

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Who is a mentor and what kind of flexible skills should he have