What is more important: technical skills or peoples skills? pepole skills!

The last couple of days has been full of articles related to IT skills (http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/040609-10-tech-skills.html), jobs in demand (http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/40333), the importance of a computer science degree (http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/040609-hot-tech-skills.html) and more. As someone who worked in this industry for more then a few years, my personal preference always goes for the person who has the peoples skills. This refers to the person that can communicate, answer in a timely manner, pick up the phone when called, reply to voice mail, smile, relate to the needs of others and have enthusiasm. I have worked with experts who were amazing in their ability to understand and solve problems, but were unable to communicate this to their peers. Guess what happens when you need to scale and do more then what a single person can do … I have worked with engineers who had three or four ccie certs, but were incapable of lowering down their level of lectures to the ears of their listeners, or they were unable to answer according to the question they were asked. I worked for managers who only cared about their financial gain, but were unable to understand that their most important assets are their employees. We work in a very intensive industry, getting tens and hundreds emails per day, how many of those could you eliminate in a single phone call? yet many prefer to reply with another question, A smart manager once told me that he encourages his employee to call each other, email is an efficient media but there is no replacement for a phone call. Hearing this was an eye opener for me, it is something that influenced me and still does. My experience has been that you can teach technology or get people to learn it (in most cases), but you can’t teach peoples skills. Someone either has it or not. Two candidates applied for a job, one is an experienced ccnp and the other is not certified and not experienced. The not certified one demonstrate peoples skills and the other one doesn’t. I’m going for the one that has no certs. later …