  We review the literature relating to soft skills and the software engineering
and information systems domain before describing a study based on 650 job
advertisements posted on well-known recruitment sites from a range of
geographical locations including, North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
The study makes use of nine defined soft skills to assess the level of demand
for each of these skills related to individual job roles within the software
industry. This work reports some of the vital statistics from industry about
the requirements of soft skills in various roles of software development
phases. The work also highlights the variation in the types of skills required
for each of the roles. We found that currently although the software industry
is paying attention to soft skills up to some extent while hiring but there is
a need to further acknowledge the role of these skills in software development.
The objective of this paper is to analyze the software industry soft skills
requirements for various software development positions, such as system
analyst, designer, programmer, and tester. We pose two research questions,
namely, (1) What soft skills are appropriate to different software development
lifecycle roles, and (2) Up to what extend does the software industry consider
soft skills when hiring an employee. The study suggests that there is a further
need of acknowledgment of the significance of soft skills from employers in
software industry.
