Development of Professional Competencies in IT-specialists

Background. The disclosure of patterns of formation and development of basic competencies of specialists is an essential condition for optimizing the process of professional training and improving the effectiveness of information-related activity in general. Objective. The aim is to identify and explain the features and patterns of the genesis of two basic categories of specialists’ competencies: hard-skills and soft-skills in the process of professionalization. Methods. A set of techniques aimed at expert assessment of the degree of formation of the main professional competencies in specialists was applied. The research was based on the synthesis of the judgments concentration method, the method of focus groups and the method of “frequency-significant selection”, as well as on a specially developed methodology for exporting two categories of competencies: hard-skills and soft-skills. In addition, the method of correlation analysis was used, including in the variant of determining the coefficients of the correlation ratio (η). Study Participants. The study involved three experienced groups of specialists from one of the most representative types of this activity — programmers. The first group included persons with up to 1.5 years of experience; the second — with 3 to 4 years of experience; the third — with 7 or more years of experience. Quantitatively, the first group included 72 respondents, the second group consisted of 64 participants, and the third group involved 43 people. 74% of the total number of the entire sample were male, 26% were female. The age range of the surveyed respondents is from 21 to 42 years. Results. It is revealed that the formation and development of a common set of professional competencies, differentiating into two main categories: hard-skills and soft-skills, is based on the principles that are characteristic of system-genesis as a special type of genesis. They are the principles of unevenness and heterochrony. Consequently, the process of professionalization of specialists is also a process of system-genesis. It is proved that in relation to information activity and its genesis, this process acquires fundamentally new characteristics. It unfolds not only in accordance with classical system-genetic patterns, but also appears as a more complex process of metasystem-genesis. This means that it includes the formation and development not only of those determinants that have internal localization in relation to it as a system, but al