Here Are Skills That Employers Look For In Linux Professionals

A perfect combination of people skills and qualifications can fetch you a good Linux job. Here's what employers are looking for.

Friday, August 30, 2013:  Job seekers in the IT market with Linux skills definitely have an upper hand right now, but even then a right combination of technical and people skills are desired by the employers. Here's what employers are looking for in a Linux professional while they are hiring:

1. Natural Curiosity:

Linux.com have quoted Peter Baer Galvin, chief technologist for Corporate Technologies as saying, "When we look to hire Linux system administrators, there are a few key aspects that get our attention. Natural curiosity is one. Is the candidate interested in technology, finding solutions to problems, inventing new solutions, and experimenting? We find those attributes to be a good indicator of whether the admin will be able to improvise, learn, and determine the best course of action."

While a Linux admin can have all the skills that every employer looks forward to, as Galvin says, natural curiosity is one skill which can help you stand out.

2. Previous experience:

Previous experience doesn't hurt, either. "Another key is production environment experience," Galvin adds. "It's one thing to be able to debug a problem and put a fix in place. It's another to be able to do that with a view toward long-term stability, repeatability, and without breaking other things in the short or long term. A good admin can put together a string of innovations to create an environment that suits today's needs. A great admin does that while solving tomorrow's potential needs and providing a stable, debug-able, and manageable facility."

3. Work Well With Others:

And then there's the good old communication. Yes, admins are expected to work well with others. "Another aspect is teamwork and sociability," Galvin says. "Is this a person others will want to work with, learn from, teach, and support? Because we provide consulting services, we need to know if the sys admin can be trusted in client environments and be able to work with the clients, sometimes in stressful situations, and whether they will be supported by and support the other admins and consultants."

4. Qualifications:

If you are actually in a job hunt we would suggest try and look out for qualifications that companies are looking for via job portals. Few of them are:

- Web server administration
- Virtualization and managing virtual machines
- Enterprise monitoring and management frameworks
- Working in structured change management processes for highly available enterprise systems
- VMware
- Perl, Bash, Python scripting
- Work well with others
- Self motivated
- Ability to learn new technologies on own
- Knowledge of the Linux kernel and kernel modules
- IT security
- Familiarity with open source tools, monitoring systems, hardware troubleshoot, tracking, resolution, and routine maintenance with security updates
- Perform installations/patching of operating system, software installation, and system backups - data recovery
- Possess great people skills
- Strong technical aptitude and ability to research and solve complex issues independently
- Systems administration vendor certification
- Working exposure to networked storage (SAN, NAS) concepts
- ITIL Foundation certification
- Symantec
- Solaris 10 experience
- Red Hat clusters
- RHCE certification

As shown on Dice.com, besides the skill "Linux," expected from the Linux administrators, the top 10 skills that employers list in their ads are:

- Unix
- Scripting
- Network
- Communication
- Windows
- Development
- Security
- Design
- Shell
- Engineering

Courtesy: Linux.com

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