Junior Software Engineers’ International Communication and Collaboration Competences

Abstract

Present-day Software Engineering working environment is highly international. Teams are commonly formed of people from different nationalities and cultural backgrounds. The team’s productivity and efficiency depend significantly on its members’ international communication and collaboration competences. Therefore, understanding the required competences is essential. The software organizations hiring new software engineers need to be able to define and describe the competences, and the junior software engineers applying for their first jobs should know what competences they need to possess and demonstrate. In this study, to increase understanding of necessary communication and collaboration competences in the international Software Engineering working environment, competences were, first, analyzed from the job advertisements applicable to junior software engineers and, second, identified by a literature review. The results were compared to identify what competences junior software engineers should learn and demonstrate, to be competent in the international software engineer job markets. The job advertisement findings show that the international operational environment expects extensive competence in collaboration, high competence in English, and considerable competence in local language and communication. Intercultural competence and other languages are hardly expected. The literature review emphasizes inter-related communication, collaboration, intercultural, and language competences at various levels. Eventually, junior software engineers should demonstrate a tolerant and adaptable attitude, cooperativeness, independence, openness, courage to influence, oral and written social interaction skills, fluent professional English and local language communication skills as well as field-specific and general collaboration methods. The findings benefit juniors and Software Engineering education through which also employers obtain more competent jobseekers.

Keywords

• International competence
• job advertisement
• junior software engineer
• software engineering