Skip to main content

Identifying Enterprise Skills and Creating a Job Tracker

Enterprise Skills​

Introduction to Enterprise Skills​

Enterprise skills are the abilities needed to excel in a professional environment. Enterprise skills differ from soft skills and technical skills. At Epicodus, you learn industry-specific technical skills like programming languages and development tools. Technical skills are not transferable in most cases. Soft skills overlap with enterprise skills, and they're both transferable across different fields. . Soft skills and enterprise skills are often used interchangeably and both are important in any industry

Hiring managers consider enterprise skills when they're evaluating you as a candidate. So, beyond helping you excel in the workplace, these skills help you land a job in the first place. Some common enterprise skills are leadership, critical thinking, and teamwork. We can't cover them all, but we'll start off by looking at some of the most in-demand skills. From there, you'll explore other enterprise skills on your own, identify which you may already have and which you plan to develop further.

Essential Enterprise Skills​

Analytical Skills. These skills involve collecting, interpreting, and communicating data.

  • Research. This is the collecting data part of analytical skills. Effective research skills help you be efficient in your work. This could look like using available resources to understand a new tool so that you can use that tool in your work. It's important to spend time working through a problem on your own, but as important to know how to find help.
  • Critical thinking. Critical thinkers form their own conclusions and don't depend on others to think for them. This means that you weigh available resources and synthesize that information. Challenging the status quo and asking difficult questions helps drive innovation and progress. Critical thinking is becoming more important with the use of AI. Artificial intelligence is a powerful resource, but should not replace critical thinking. Compare different sources, identify the differences between them, and draw your own conclusions.
  • Communication. Strong communication skills allow you to convey information both in writing and speaking. Communication skills are important for collaborating, presenting ideas, and resolving conflicts. Active listening and understanding the perspectives of others are integral to communication. One-way communication is ineffective and doesn't contribute to teamwork or conflict resolution.

Problem-solving. Analytical skills set the stage for problem-solving and progress. Developers need to navigate through unexpected challenges and find innovative solutions. Adaptive problem-solving requires leveraging available resources and adjusting strategies as circumstances evolve.

Teamwork and collaboration. Each of the skills above incorporates collaboration and is only half-complete without it. Critical thinking does not mean that your conclusions are always correct. If you don't work with your team and listen to their ideas, you'll miss out on solutions that you overlooked. If you research a new tool on your own and don't ask for help when you need it, you'll waste valuable time and energy. Practice both learning from others and contributing your experience to the team.

This is not an exhaustive list, but rather a jumping off point, so take some time to consider other skills that you may have from past work or education experience that are useful across industries and roles. You can also look at developer-related job postings on job boards like LinkedIn or Google Jobs to identify other enterprise skills that software and tech roles focus on; this can be especially helpful as you identify which skills you already have, and which you would like to work on.

Now that we've covered some basic enterprise skills, take time to write down a list of enterprise skills you already have. Next, choose a few skills that you don’t already have that you want tofocus on developing.

Once you have this list, the next step is to create a plan for strengthening skills you already have, and what steps you can take to develop skills you don’t. While enterprise skills are something you’ll develop naturally throughout the course of your education and work experience, it’s important to be proactive and intentional about working on skills you may not currently be as strong in.