How do you get a group of socially withdrawn, uncommunicative techies' attention? Speaking expert Anne Warfield of Impression Management, often asks them to think of the last 20 people in their company who got promoted and assess whether they were the most technically qualified. "Almost all of them will say they were not," says Warfield. To get ahead these days, techies need a good mix of technical and communication skills.

From PC support specialists to C++ coders, techies are infamous for their lack of communication skills -- and that's a polite way of putting it. Non-techies often think of technical folk as jargon-crazed, gadget-obsessed and not particularly interested in people. An extreme characterisation? Yes. Unfair? Maybe. A stereotype? Sure it is, but techies have a well-deserved reputation for placing a priority on skills -- knowledge of XML, say, or Windows device drivers -- rather than personal relationships or being able to communicate what they know to others.

"They form a kind of guild mentality," says Bob Senatore, executive vice president of Comforce Information Technologies, an information technology staffing firm. "Techies feel that's part of their culture, and they must speak in this language only they can understand. That's working against them dramatically."