Career advice from Annagiulia from Shadow Robot

In this video, Annagiulia Morachioli describes a varied career in which she tried out several roles across a range of businesses. Her story demonstrates that you don’t need to choose a job and stay in it for the rest of your life, but you can try different things and eventually, you will find something that you’re passionate about.

Annagiulia recommends developing your soft skills, such communication skills, problem solving, and teamwork, and to never stop learning.

Soft skills

A proficient roboticist should have the following skills:

They should be an excellent problem-solver and have good methodologies at their disposal to solve different problems.

They should be pragmatic on top of being a good problem-solver. There is only so much time and energy available and so many problems that need solving; a good professional will balance solving problems sensibly given time commitments.

They should be able to collaborate and work effectively in a team. Building a robotics system is a complex task and requires experts in different areas; you will need to work with different people, collaborate and communicate effectively to deliver

They should be able to manage their time. We are living in a fast-paced world. In the last few days, most professionals received an email or message demanding priority-shifting, changes, or to focus on an entirely new project than our parents did in a month or a year, so being able to manage your time effectively will be critical.

They must be able to write and communicate clearly and effectively. You will need to write documents, and send emails to customers and stakeholders to explain difficult to grasp concepts and problems. You may also have to present your work to an audience or explain your work to your manager clearly and effectively.

They should be continuously learning. Robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning are topics that are actively developing and changing; staying relevant means learning constantly about the new state-of-the-art. A career in robotics would require that you stay relevant and learn new things throughout your career.

Identify

Make a list of

• Three soft skills that you think you are particularly good at
• Three soft skills that you think you could develop further.

What activities could you use to develop these skills?