You've paid your dues in IT management, a golden opportunity has arisen, and you're preparing to interview for a CIO position. But it's been a while since you've sat for a job interview, and this time the interview is for the ultimate role. What is your prospective employer really looking for, and how best can you maximise your chances of success during this harrowing process?
Here are tips and advice from experts on how to ace that all-important CIO interview. Essentially, interviewing for a CIO role requires two resonant qualities: business savvy and communication skills. Candidates need to identify and articulate good examples of these skills in order to make an impact.
The reason to stress business experience
The CEO or another board-level executive typically interviews all positions for high-level tech leaders (CIO, CTO, VP of IS). From the CEO's perspective, it's the business, and how a CIO candidate can help the business achieve goals, that's most important. The CEO is not likely to be impressed by or interested in the intricacies of programming in .NET, for instance. But the CEO would like to hear how .NET could be used to revolutionise corporate processes.
Stephen Grace, a senior consultant with Hays IT Personnel, has interviewed 30 to 40 candidates for CIO roles during the last six months. Grace said final candidate decisions usually hinge on personality, as CEOs and board members want a good cultural and personality fit. But the most crucial and constant executive requirement today, Grace said, is a candidate who "has come from a business-driven culture, a leader who focuses on competencies rather than roles, and who is able to give examples of strong leadership and its ability to empower people."
Being able to demonstrate experience is imperative. Grace said many managers claim to have held strategic roles, but when questioned in detail about why they chose a particular strategy at their current or former job, they aren't able to articulate why a decision was made.
A candidate who could answer that question properly, with a response such as "it will move the business to this position in four years," would definitely have a leading edge. That, along with experience in quality assurance, change management, business process reengineering (BPR), and an actual knowledge of what's happening in the industry and where things are heading, is also important, Grace noted. A candidate who has experience in dealing with large steering committees is also considered valuable, since corporate decision making often involves committee leadership and involvement.
The interview questions to expect
When it comes to the actual interview questions, be prepared to be specific and detailed. Recruitment consultants say candidates should expect to give examples of projects they've led that have had a real impact on a business, and be able to demonstrate how they acted as a change agent. Here are four questions you can expect to answer in a CIO interview:
- Can you explain how you saw a business problem and implemented technology to solve it?
- What significant contribution did you make at your last company?
- Do you understand ROI, and can you articulate this understanding?
- How did you save money and improve the bottom line, and how did you measure these savings?
