Understanding the Soft Skills that Industry Wants from Requirements Engineers: a Focus Group Study

[Context/Motivation] Research on the professional occupation of Requirements Engineering (RE) in Europe and Latin America indicated soft skills are the very important when companies search for specialists to employ. A very long list of soft skills came out as a result of prior research, with proficiency in English being the Number One skill. [Question/problem] To what extent however are these skills deemed critical in doing RE, and also in making hiring decisions in RE, and why? Which skills are to be ranked higher in regard to hiring decision, and which – lower? We want to compare results based on analyses of job ads with practitioners’ perceptions in real-life organizations. [Principal ideas/results] This live study proposal includes two focus groups with REFSQ practitioners from industry, to understand the soft skills perceived by practitioners as the most important. Each focus group is planned to include 6 to 8 persons. Then, we will use coding as the data analysis technique. [Expected Contribution] The study is confirmatory in nature. It is expected to reveal an overlap and possible discrepancies between published analyses of job ads, and real-life experiences of practitioners in organizations.