Breaking into tech: Essential skills every new grad needs

Welcome to Level 1: The Real World. You’ve graduated, equipped with knowledge, and are now stepping into the fast-paced world of tech. But landing your first job isn’t just about having a degree; it’s about leveling up your skills to stand out in a competitive industry.

Think of your career like a video game. You start as a beginner, gaining experience points (XP) with every skill you master. The more you learn, the more opportunities you unlock. But here’s the catch: the workplace isn’t like college. Assignments don’t have clear instructions, and there’s no professor to guide you step by step. You’ll be expected to learn on the fly, collaborate with a team, and figure things out independently.

Ready for your next quest? Here are the essential skills every new grad needs and how to build them.

Coding foundations: Choose your primary weapon

You may have written code in college, but in the real world, writing clean, efficient, and maintainable code is what counts. Unlike school projects where code is often written solo and never revisited, professional developers work on large-scale applications where their code must be readable and usable by others. Companies also care about problem-solving ability. It's not just whether you can write a for-loop, but whether you can solve complex challenges with logic and efficiency.

Level Up: Choose one language and build a project that solves a real problem. A personal finance tracker, a portfolio website, or even an AI-powered to-do list—anything that shows your skills in action. Push it to GitHub, and you’ve just earned major XP.

Power-Up: Explore all the standard languages used in your area of focus. Courses like Programming Languages for Data Analysts can expand your skills and awareness in record time.

Version control & collaboration: Join the guild

In college, you may have coded in isolation, but in the workplace, you’ll rarely work alone. Teams use Git and GitHub to manage codebases, track changes, and collaborate without overwriting each other’s work. If you’ve never dealt with merge conflicts or pull requests before, it can be overwhelming at first. But mastering version control is non-negotiable. Every developer is expected to use it from day one.

Level Up: Start using Git for all your coding projects. Learn how to fork, commit, and merge. Contribute to an open-source project. Even a small bug fix earns you valuable teamwork XP.

Power-Up: Boost your github know-how by exploring Github Copilot or other AI integrations. Try a guided lab on Git and debugging or a deep dive into collaborative workflows.

Cloud & cybersecurity basics: Equip your armor

One thing new grads often don’t realize? Most companies aren’t running their applications on personal laptops or local servers anymore—they live in the cloud. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud dominate the industry, and if you’re unfamiliar with cloud computing, you might struggle to understand how modern applications are deployed and scaled. Similarly, cybersecurity isn’t just for security professionals, it’s everyone’s responsibility. A single mistake in your code could expose user data or create vulnerabilities in a company’s system.

Level Up: Take a course and earn a beginner-friendly certification like one on SSCP (Systems Security Certified Practitioner) or Microsoft Azure Fundamentals. Bonus XP if you set up your own cloud-hosted project!

Power-Up: If you’re ready for a bigger challenge, try a harder certification course like the Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500) or explore the Active Directory Security Hands-on Sandbox. Better than a side quest, hands-on labs make learning real-world security skills fun.

Soft skills that make a difference: Unlock dialogue options

Tech jobs aren’t just about technical skills. New grads often focus on perfecting their coding skills but forget that communication is just as critical. Can you explain a technical concept to a non-technical manager? Can you handle feedback in a constructive way? Can you collaborate without stepping on toes? In the workplace, your ability to communicate, collaborate, and problem-solve with others will determine how successful you are much more than how many programming languages you know.

Level Up: Practice explaining a tech concept in simple terms. Try teaching recursion to a friend or writing a LinkedIn post about a project you worked on. Clarity and confidence = bonus XP.

Power-Up: Take a tech-focused communication course like "Writing in the Workplace"  or one on “Presentation and Visual Communication” to sharpen your ability to explain complex ideas effectively.

Agile & devops mindset: Master speedrun tactics

In school, you probably worked on projects with fixed deadlines and clear requirements. But in the real world, things change constantly. Agile teams work in short sprints, adapting as they go. Meanwhile, DevOps automates deployment and monitoring, ensuring software gets released quickly and reliably. If you don’t understand these workflows, you might find yourself struggling to keep up with your team’s pace.

Level Up: Find an open-source project using Agile or DevOps and contribute. Even just following an Agile tutorial and building a continuous integration pipeline with a tool like Travis CI will help you gain experience points.

Power-Up: Take an Agile Fundamentals course or try the DevOps Learning Path on Pluralsight to learn how tech teams really work—and what makes them successful.

Learning after college: The tech job expansion pack

Graduating unlocked Tech Career: Base Game, but here’s the thing: technology never stops evolving. The frameworks, languages, and tools you learned in college will not be enough forever. The most successful tech professionals stay ahead by continuously learning new skills and adapting to industry changes. The question isn’t whether you’ll need to upskill, it’s when.

Level Up: Use Pluralsight to level up in Python, cloud, DevOps, or whatever excites you. Take assessments, follow hands-on paths, and keep stacking XP.

Power-Up: Set up a personalized learning path based on the skills you need to land your dream job. Use Pluralsight’s Skill IQ assessments to see where you stand and what to focus on next.

Ready to start your tech career journey?

Breaking into tech isn’t about grinding mindlessly—it’s about leveling up strategically. Focus on practical projects, build a portfolio, and keep learning.

Need a boost? Pluralsight has expert-led courses and hands-on learning paths to help you power up faster. Start now and get ahead of the competition.