Professional and Interpersonal Skills for ICT Specialists

The main objective of this paper is to define and evaluate the professional abilities of an engineer who works as an IT professional in Spain, primarily telecommunications engineers and computer scientists. Their occupational profiles will provide us with a useful tool for defining and conceptualizing curriculum plans for new qualifications, which the EU Higher Education Area project will require in 2010. European universities, institutes of higher education, and learning centers are currently drawing up such proposals. This article presents a first attempt at defining the professional characteristics-in terms of competence and aptitude-that an IT professional should possess. It focuses more on interpersonal skills and abilities than to knowledge and technical expertise.