Technical Skills

Technical skills in the context of your education, are the languages, tools, concepts, frameworks, design patterns and in some cases working practices taught by ECS as part of your degree. In addition, by learning multiple examples of each, you acquire the mental models and frameworks that allow you learn new examples, fast.

Often Industry will have limited interest in the specific skills you have learned. If they need a Python expert, they will employ a Python expert, not a graduate. If they need someone familiar with tech, smart, that can learn fast -- they will employ you.

Shorter qualifications will not achieve this learning how to learn, unfortunately it takes time. Instead they generate a graduate that has learned, for example, Ruby on Rails. But not a graduate that has learned multiple languages and knows how to quickly learn Groovy, .NET, Cobol, Android or (see this long list of languages).

In addition, Industry does not expect your technical talents to be deep. Quite bluntly they view you as having been introduced to the basics of many technical topics. Your education has breadth rather than depth. However learning more, fast, should be a given, particularly in Industry environments where you are rubbing shoulders with experts.

The research

Most students undertake an IT degree specifically to gain the technical skills. The feedback from those who have graduated from ECS is the most valuable tech skill learnt is the ability to learn tech skills. The feedback from employers is that tech skills will get you the interview, soft skills will get you the job.