The other day, a colleague of mine forwarded a rather interesting Atlanta-based CIO opportunity. This particular opportunity was for a $20-25M logistics company focusing on the railroad industry. One of the key requirements was some experience working within either the logistics, railroad, or supply chain industries. Since I have some supply chain experience in my background, I thought I would toss my name into the proverbial hat and learn a bit more about what they were doing.

Now I should point out that from what the job description stated, this firm needs some serious help. They’ve gone from $6M to $25M in 4 years, and as a result of that rapid growth, their technology systems are, well, quite “varied.” They have 5 different platforms, and my guess is, its all held together with bubble gum and bailing wire. Hence, their need for someone to come in and straighten out the mess, and position them for growth by consolidation and migration.

I sent the recruiter a nice but succinct introductory email, along with my resume. She replied to me several days later with a rather interesting email. In this email, she pasted a lengthy questionnaire, along with some instructions.

I took a quick look at the first few questions, and they seemed routine enough, so I thought I would take some time to compose a nice response. Given that recruiters can quickly become overwhelmed with candidates (and also having personally hired hundreds of candidates over the years), I completely understand the various screening techniques that they use.

NOTE: Be sure to ANSWER all the questions below, as well as:

*where you LIVE NOW…local Atlanta candidates will be given FIRST consideration!!

*when you are available to interview,

*when you are available to start and

Your MINIMUM annual salary requirements.

NOTE:
** Experience in transportation, logistics, rail, distribution or supply-chain industries is absolutely required for this position.If interested, write back with the number of years of experience and a brief explanation of that specific experience in each of the following:

# Years in logistics software (name of software)
# Years in supply chain software (name of software)
# Years in railroad
# Do you consider yourself an expert in Microsoft Project, Excel, Access, Word, PowerPoint?
# EDUCATION: from where? in what?

Please go through this technology…and let me know how much experience you have in each:
# .Net
# ADO
# ADO.Net
# ASP
# ASP.Net
# BCP
# BEAM Resources
# C#
# COM
# Crystal Reports
# DTS
# HTML
# IIS
# JavaScript
# MDX
# Oracle Database
# PowerBuilder PFC
# SQL OLAP
# SQL Server database
# VBScript
# Visual Basic
# XML
# XSL

**NOTE: Also be SURE that if you have a particular experience from the above listing..that you have reflected that technology under the specific job(s) where you used it on you resume…not just in your technical skills section!

Trust me when I say that you don’t need to know how many “years of experience” a CIO has with HTML, or whether or not they have direct experience in two dozen other technologies (which is what this questionnaire asked). Technology executives need to understand 3 things about a given technology: what it does, what it costs, how it integrates. They don’t need to have memorized all of the attributes of HTML table tags or CSS options.

In order to make this post a bit more fun, I sent this job description to a retained executive recruiter who is an associate of mine, and asked him to rewrite the job description. This is what he sent back:

———————

Scott, this one is bad. Real bad. Very unprofessional.

First, we push our clients to write the job description. That way we can validate what they asked for. However, probably half we have to write for them.

Couple of things to look for at first and avoid …

1. Any job opportunity with out a compensation range is a red flag
2. Any job opportunity which point out negative aspects of the job – “Downtown” , “fallen by the wayside”
3. Any C-level opportunity that talks about parking dollars or riding Marta hints that it is very small
4. Any C-level opportunity that list detailed low level requirements that our required

The following is a big sign that this is being handled by a non-executive recruiter:

Also provide me with your availability to interview, when you would be available to start and your minimum salary requirement. When you are available to interview, when you are available to start and Your MINIMUM annual salary requirements.

OK here goes the rewrite. This is difficult because I don’t know what the client is really looking for …

Position: CIO
Location: Atlanta, GA
Compensation: $150k-$200k
Summary:

A world-class provider of Logistics and Supply Chain software products is looking to fill a CIO position. This client provides Logistics Management and integrated Supply Chain tracking systems to customers on five continents. The client has been in an accelerated growth mode and is looking for a leader who can set strategy and bring structure to an organization which has grown very rapidly. The CIO will be responsible for an organization that manages a variety of technologies such as … Visual Basic, Crystal Reports, .Net, Oracle, IIS and ASP, PowerBuilder/PFC, XML, XSL, JavaScript, VBScript, HTML, and DHTML.

Requirements:

• Experience in transportation, logistics, rail, distribution or supply-chain industries is needed
• Experience setting IT Strategy
• Experience consolidating multiple IT platforms and architectures
• Experience reorganizing and motivating IT organizations

If you are interested or know someone who might be, please call us at …
————-

What a difference!

At any rate, this is what can happen when you let a body shop staff your CIO role. If you are in the market for a CIO, CTO, or some other technology executive, you owe it to yourself to partner with a recruiter or firm that specializes in handling executive-level hires. Retained firms are the best, but more expensive. Many contingency-based firms can also handle your requests with skill and care. If you insist on going with a body shop to find your CIO/CTO/Tech VP, take some time to review their process – make sure that they are looking for the right things – the things that will matter to you in the end.

By not doing so, you run the risk of running off decent candidates, and fostering the perception that your firm isn’t serious about its executive-level technology hires.

Cheers.

He had originally called me to gauge my interest as a potential candidate for this role. As it turned out, I was not a good fit for the position, as the industry involved was not something I had direct experience in. I did, however, offer to learn more about the position, in hopes of turning him on to someone who would be a better fit.

When I asked him to describe the responsibilities he envisioned for this person, he initially told me that the CIO would need to really be able to jump into the fire and help the development team with the day-to-day development effort. I told him that it sounded to me like he needed to hire a “software development manager”, not a CIO. Hiring a good development manager would provide more focus on his software engineering efforts. Additionally, it would be more cost effective than hiring a CIO, and the savings could then be put back into the budget for other things.

He pondered this for a moment, and proceeded to inform me that this person would also need to be responsible for keeping the network and data center up and running. This would involve network availability monitoring, and management of all of the routers, switches, servers and other big glowy boxy-looking thingamajigs in the data center. I told him that it sounded to me like he needed to hire a “network operations manager” to work in conjunction with his software development manager.

He muffled a small sigh, and replied that he was also looking for this person to manage the strategic alignment with their technology partners, and provide architectural oversight for the company’s core software product line. I told him that it sounded to me like he needed a “chief technology officer”, or CTO, to work in side-by-side with the network ops manager and the development manager.

I thought about his burgeoning list of needs for a moment, and realized that his expectations were a wee bit out of skew. I posed the questions “what are the priorities here? Which tasks are more important than others?” He replied that they were all equally important, and that he was hoping to find them all in the same person, as he only had room in the budget for a single hire. Suffice it to say, I don’t think he liked my advice.

I realize that smaller firms need employees that are able to wear many hats, but in this day and age they can’t conceivably wear them all at once. I suppose that it is possible to find someone capable of doing all of the things he wants, it just isn’t very probable. 10 or 15 years ago, it wasn’t only probable, it was easy. That is simply no longer the case.

Back then, you could wear all of those hats with very little effort, as the technical environments we worked within back then were not as sophisticated and as complex as what we have today. Technology folks back then, even at the executive or managerial levels, were not required to become intimate with the business drivers – no longer the case. In addition, the standards against which we had to adhere were sparse or nonexistant (for example, HIPAA & Sarbanes Oxley).

In situations like this, it is probably more advantageous to prioritize your needs by aligning them with your overall business strategy, and hire accordingly. At some point, it may make sense to bring on a CIO-level hire, however a tighter focus on operational-level hires is probably going to have a better ROI in the short-term. In addition, you avoid the risk of putting someone too junior in a role that will eventually require someone more senior (as your business scales).

Cheers.