A good resume

Recent times have seen some distinguished CEOs and leaders biting the dust literally when some untruths were discovered in their resumes, a clear case of unnecessary padding. A few did not possess the qualifications they professed, some had not been to colleges they put in there. These are not run of the mill average Joe kind of people, they are in high offices and have shaped the future of many. It created news for a short while, and then everyone moved on relegating the tainted ones to oblivion.

To expand the team I recently started hiring fresh and experienced talent and was flooded with resumes. It was a task to navigate through pages of hundreds of eager professionals looking through spell check errors, acronyms that I have no clue what they mean, grammatical goof ups, and multiple formats that challenged me to find information in a maze game. These were not freshers, unexposed to corporate culture; they included experienced professionals with decade plus behind them.

I did not challenge the veracity of the information presented even in cases that stretched conventional wisdom, though annotating to explore further in the interview. I discovered that IT folks are largely truthful and sometimes too much; if they have been on a project that involved a leading edge technology, they will ensure it catches your attention. Only on digging deeper you realize that their role could have been just testing or documentation; or maybe peripheral and not technical or functional.

The conscientious mentioned every project, every assignment, and every new company even if they spent only a few months in each; though the interesting ones were the gaps which during the interview were explained in shy and embarrassing tones. They believed that if you join a company and realize that it was a mistake, don’t mention it; skip the experience that does not reflect well on your resume. No mal intent here, just that not always in interest of keeping an abridged and concise representation; just to put the best foot forward.

So how to get the real person out of a few pages of history including education, experience, achievements, personality, potential, technical skills, and what have you. There are umpteen reference websites that offer to teach the art of interviewing and getting the best out of the person sitting across the table, the potential candidate. The intent though not adversarial is to assess everything possible about the person in the typical less than an hour spent, lateral thinking and what not.

I am not sure if this would make sense, but it is not just the responses to the questions that help us in the selection process, there is a lot more. The first few minutes have already decided the way the interview goes; subconscious mind or body language, you already know if you will like the person. The resume and the detailed planning are then thus pointers to the discussion. I have rarely seen a situation where the candidate was able to swing it around though many did not live up to initial expectations.

Coming back to the moot point, why do people manipulate resumes ? Is it just to look better than who they are or a desperate urge to get something that is not rightfully theirs ? Is it misplaced self-esteem or belief of personal value ? I don’t know, everyone probably has different motivations; do they realize that in the end they are really undermining their integrity and the way people see them ? Or has the value system changed in a way that we are comfortable with little lies if they go unnoticed ?

CIO Resume - Part 2

A few weeks back I had written about my tryst with a CIO struggling to create a resume that would evince interest from headhunters, executive placement, or companies looking for one. After an unsuccessful struggle attempting to advise her to illustrate the business benefits of her interventions, I finally invited her over to collaboratively create a document that may interest someone looking for a CIO.

Together reading through the resume, I noticed she was passionate about her achievements and the impact they created, but had no words in her vocabulary to transform the bullets into business impact. So I decided to indulge in some role play and asked her to be the CEO of a company who wants to hire a CIO and read the document again. Every few minutes I stopped her to observe if it meant anything to the CEO. Her Oh I See moment stretched through until the second reading!

Take an example “16 years of experience in deployment of technology projects“, changing to “16 years of aligning business and IT consistently delivering to promise” or for that matter “Implemented FICO, SD, PP, MM, HR modules ….” which was replaced by “Optimized processes and improved business efficiency by up to 30% …., driven by SAP implementation”. The entire document underwent clinical surgery over two hours with the promise of post operative care to reduce the overall size to fewer than four pages, shedding almost 40% irrelevant content.

Everyone has a story to tell, but the story needs to catch the attention of the reader in the first 200 words or so. The risk of a boring or unintelligible document is real when the supply is higher than the demand. A large volume is less likely to be read compared to a concise one. Cater to the targeted audience and not a generic one. Research the target organization and change accordingly is a great way to at least make it to the shortlist. Talk to common friends or vendors if you are able to.

So is there an ideal format for a CIO resume, structure, content, layout? The answer is no, everyone is unique and has a different story to tell with their background, industries worked for, technologies deployed, and contributions made. Make sure that your headlines attract attention; the text that follows has conviction in what it portrays.

Finally, I think that what really matters is how you have contributed to the enterprise growth or savings, impacted customers (internal or external), what kind of influence you have within the industry you work for, the teams you have managed, the geographies and cultures that you understand, and contributions towards success of your peers. Isn’t this what a CIO or for that matter any CXO anyway expected to do?

Read CIO Resume: Part I

A CIO resume

I was reading an article on CIO resume for 2011 with some interest and a bit of cynicism when an email popped into my inbox asking for help. The sender was looking for opportunities as a CIO wanting to expand her role moving from an SME organization to a larger one. Her decade and half of experience across various companies had served her well and she felt that with the economic growth, there would be openings where she could try her skills and luck. Now whether this was providence or coincidence, I don’t know, but I started reviewing the lady’s resume against the principles in the article on my screen.

Everyone, well almost everyone has debated ad infinitum the changing role and expectations from a CIO. We all agree that in the current context, the CIO is a business technology leader driving business and efficiencies with help from technology. Contributions to top line as well as bottom line are now a rule rather than an exception. Any self-respecting CIO would vehemently defend his/ her position and seat at the management table; the discussions are no longer about what is the value, but how much.

So I was surprised to see the mail from this friend who was struggling to find an opening as a CIO. She was technically competent, had delivered most projects for her various companies, and had worked hard through the ranks and risen to head IT for a small business. All the ingredients existed that are required for movement to the next level. I reflected on the discussions with her during a few past meetings and could not find anything that would disqualify the person. So what was missing?

Opening the attachment that was the resume, I started reading. As I read through the first few lines, it was evident that she had achieved success in most of her endeavors be it setting up MPLS enterprise networks, implementing ERP, greening data centers, virtualization, and a host of technologies. Through the years across companies, she stayed with contemporary technologies and collected a bunch of certifications like PMP, ITIL, CCNE, and MSCE to name a few. Some projects brought fame in IT publications and they were reflected prominently in the document. Is something missing?

Then I put my business hat on and restarted reading. Looked impressive; but where is the value to the enterprise, colleagues, peers, and in general, the connect to benefit that was accrued to the company? The resume lacked mention of initiative, change management, teamwork, metrics or values around the impact of the projects. As a leader, how did she work the internal and external teams towards delivering what mattered! Suddenly I felt that the person had remained enveloped in the world of technology rarely visiting the outside world of business. Her portrayal did not reflect a CIO, but a tech professional.

So I communicated my appraisal of the document advising change to ‘sell’ business alignment and what matters to business; technology is the foundation and can also be outsourced, but domain skills are valuable. Months later, another document landed in my inbox with changes; I tore my hair wondering where I missed in my communication. Maybe she struggled to find the value statement; maybe she does not know how to articulate. Many thoughts wandered through my mind.

After another chance meeting with her, I recommended that she come over for a discussion to my office and hopefully we can together unearth the value and pin it down. It’s a meeting I am awaiting as anxiously as I hope she is.

Read CIO Resume Part II