[Jessi Kaestle]

A lot of people have touched on the technical expertise needed for FTA so I won’t go into that in too much detail.

One thing that seems to be either overlooked or only hinted at is the need for soft skills and maturity, both perceived and actual. As a college student your perceived maturity will be low so as a result your actual maturity and other soft skills needs to be that much better. In terms of soft skills, the main skills needed are a level head, conflict resolution, the ability to work well under pressure, time management, and leadership.

If FTA is still your goal, I would suggest volunteering at events as early as this year if possible, and try to make an impression to the VC that you have the needed soft skills. I have been responsible for selecting other key roles as well as giving input during the vetting process of potential new FTA’s and given two candidates one who had all the technical skills but lacked some of the soft skills and one who had all of the soft skills but lacked some of the technical skills I would pick the one with the soft skills every time. Technical skills can be easily taught but learning soft skills takes time.