Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as an information architect and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
An information architect is assigned the role of researching, designing and implementing of a structural design that aims to make shared information easier to access and be understood by the end user. He/she will provide a positive user experience by determining the appropriate information structure for the various online sites and applications.
Besides that major responsibility, he or she will be assigned other roles that include the following, identifying user requirements through research, evaluating traffic patterns, monitoring and evaluating user feedback, perform data categorization, creating site maps, wireframes and interface functionality, structure and classify websites for easy information access and creating site structure for websites and web applications.
Core Skills Required to be an Information Architect
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
An information architect should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Critical Thinking:
Critical Thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally while understanding the logical connection between ideas in a reflective and independent thinking.
An Information Architect will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments and findings do represent the entire picture while identifying, analyzing and solving problems by deducing consequences from what he knows and making use of the information gathered.
Strategic Planning:
Strategic Planning is organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations while guaranteeing that employees and other stakeholders are working towards common goals.
An Information Architect should be liable to develop the systematic tools to be used in the organization's processes that coordinate and align resources and actions with the mission, vision, and strategy throughout the organization.
Work Attitude:
Work Attitude is one's feelings towards and beliefs about one's job and their behavior that can tell how it feels to be there.
An Information Architect ought to encourage his workers and provide all the requirements for the workplace to ensure a positive attitude is maintained by the employees that can help them get a promotion, succeed on projects, meet goals and enjoy the job more.
Emotion Management:
Emotion Management is the ability to realize, readily accept and successfully control feelings on oneself and sometimes in others around you by being in complete authority over your thoughts and feelings that are generated whenever your values are touched.
An Information Architect must be able to manage his emotions as well as assist the staff to control their emotions to ensure that the professional reputation, the efficiency, and productivity is not compromised.
Emotional Intelligence:
Emotional Intelligence is the capability to identify your emotions, understand what they are telling me and realize how the feelings are affecting you and the people around you.
An Information Architect should be wise to handle different personalities that carry different emotions presented in the workplace while ensuring relationships are managed more efficiently by respecting your perception and the employee's as well.
Personal Commitment:
Personal Commitment is an obligation that you have voluntarily agreed to fulfill without being cajoled or threatened and are willing to be held accountable for the results.
An Information Architect ought to understand that though adopting new policies and procedures will be met with resistance, the approach by which safety standards are implemented and enforced influences employee's attitudes and commitment towards the organization.
Using Common Sense:
Using Common Sense is the ability to see what is missing in a situation or a project and supplying it without necessarily being assigned or asked to do it.
An Information Architect needs to creatively train his employees always to see the missing element that is typically crucial in any workplace or project and take the opportunity to do business out of it.
Entrepreneurial Thinking:
Entrepreneurial Thinking is a mindset that allows embraces critical questioning, innovation, service and continuous improvement with an attitude of change.
An Information Architect should challenge himself to see the big picture and creatively think outside the box too with the ability to fight all the challenges faced and keep going in the face of calamity and the social skills needed to build great teams in the workplace.
Computer Skills:
Computer Skills are the necessary computer working skills that each employee need to have while seeking to get admitted into the professional world.
An Information Architect ought to be technologically oriented and hire employees with strong computer skills because they fare better in the job market than their tech-challenged counterparts bringing a high level of quality employees in the job seeking category.
Technical Skills:
Technical Skills are the abilities and knowledge mostly related to mechanical, IT, scientific and mathematical needed to perform specific tasks in the workplace.
An Information Architect ought to hire employees with particular talents and expertise that helps them perform certain duties and jobs that other skills like soft skills cannot perform to grow both the business and the employee and bring in productivity.
Hard Skills Required to be an Information Architect
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
An information architect should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.