Six months ago, it was just a simple idea based on a few brief conversations. Today, it’s finally a reality: the Beyond Tech Skills podcast.
Some background is in order. My good friend, colleague, and fellow Oracle ACE Director Liron Amitzi and I had been talking in person over an adult beverage or three (pre-COVID, of course!) and then texting and chatting for the past few years about the state of the IT industry. We found that even with our cultural differences – he’s originally from Israel but now lives in Vancouver, BC, and 20 years younger than me – we were remarkably like-minded about the fantastic opportunities IT has to offer to so many diverse folks around the world.
But we also saw there were enormous gaps:
- Folks often focused so much on the technology itself or their coding skills that they ignored the other two-thirds of what makes a truly great professional: the soft skills they needed to be successful, including the importance of gaining detailed business knowledge as well as how to communicate clearly and work together as a team.
- IT organizations were spending incredible amounts of time trying to find qualified candidates for positions at all levels, mainly because they had no idea how to interview people properly. Even worse, many great candidates didn’t get connected with great companies simply because they didn’t know how to handle the interview process.
- Finally, as we looked back over our combined 60 years of experience, we were disturbed by the ongoing lack of diversity in many IT organizations. Both of us remember a time just a few decades back when the “white bro developer” culture didn’t exist and the advantage that different backgrounds and viewpoints yielded across the entire software development lifecycle.
We decided it was time to take action. We’re leading off our podcast with a series of episodes on the interview process itself: how to find the right candidates for your IT organization – the ones with the right fit and finish to match your teams’ goals.
But we’re not stopping there! We’ve got a great series of interviews that will tackle all of the issues we’re most concerned about, including DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and how we can all make a difference. We’ll be talking to many of our colleagues across multiple technologies and industries over the next several months.
We’re planning to publish a new episode every second Wednesday starting on 11 February, but for now, please check out our introductory episode – just point your favorite podcast app at Beyond Tech Skills – and you can always stay up to date on our entire list of episodes at BeyondTechSkills.com.
