Graduates need soft skills for data jobs, says RMIT

Employers are increasingly looking for graduates with the soft skills required to turn data into meaningful insights, according to the Future Impacts webinar series from RMIT.

The university says organisations are faced with an increasing volume of data, creating demand for employees with the technical skills to understand the data, combined with the interpersonal and problem-solving skills to turn raw numbers into useful information. This in turn is driving change in tertiary education, as training adapts to deliver data scientists with the required communication capability.

Industry experts, RMIT alumni and teaching staff weighed in, confirming that honed data interrogation skills will deliver a more meaningful outcome for businesses.

They uniformly identified curiosity, critical thinking and agility as key qualities for those wishing to stay skilled in a fast-paced world.

Crucial to the process is a three-way partnership between students, university and industry, they say, with integration into the classroom offering opportunity to witness and experience real-world problems while still learning.

The use of big data across all business functions increasingly requires common sense and critical thinking from employees to identify the value in that data and to use it to design and develop a solution to a business problem. The fast pace of technology development also means that potential solutions shift every day, requiring a mindset that embraces change in order to take advantage of the vast amount of information available.

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