Interview with a CIO

Never eat out with your colleagues before you big interview; to not admit that you could be teadious and sloppy at times.

I showed up at an interview in my sleeveless white tank top looking shirt after staining my very professional looking navy blue jacket. It was embarrasing but since it was an internal company interview, I swallowed the embarrasment and showed up on time. The hiring manager turned out to the the CIO of the group, and I thought, crap, there goes my chances.
Despite the intimidation of being interviewed by the CIO, with diminished confidence by the way I happened to have dressed, I went on with the interview, listened tentatively about what I am being asked and sold myself feveriously. Some of the questions and topics were:

- Degree and certifications
- Personality Traits
- In a project where I am in a management position, did I make decisions or collaborated with peers and engineers to come up with decisions
- What has been a challenging situation in managing someone
- If 3/4 of the job is managing and corresponding with customers and peers, sometimes on behave of the CIO, what do I see myself doing with the rest of the 1/4 of my time
- Even though it is not expected that the deputy CIO knows all subject areas, one is expected to have the high level knowledge to converse the subject
- Customer first, one needs to recognize that; be able to shape the solution for the customer by providing alternative ways to solve problems that still meet customer's needs but able to get customer to step outside of their comfort zone to understand and accept the alternative solution you have to offer; finally shape the solution/rfp around the solution your organization is able to deliver
- Pilot and evalute solution with quick turnarounds
- CIO constantly on travel and folks waiting for direction/guidance for next area to explore
- Video conferencing is being explored; expensive toys such as 9K video cameras are being use; how to fit CEO's needs for video conferencing; how to quickly apply the solution to everyone in the sector/division, eventually company wide conus and oconus
- Podcasting
- Weblog; making it easy for folks constantly on the go, such as the CEO to blog
- RSS feed; making it easy to broadcast for folks like the communications director next door (literally) to broadcast communications quicker better
- Portal; ha, time is already being spent on this one, it's an ongoing effort; CAG scheduled to go on in FY08; how to enrich content even more
- Ultimately, with a working solution, goal is to help apply implemented solutions with external customers
- Speak Easy; join, it will reap much benefits; Toastmasters also
- Growth plan; room to grow, to shape
- Executive level presentations; gotta do them with fewer slides and let folks ask questions and be able to answer them
- No micro-managing, but expecting possible results and progress
- Preference is not a senior manager but rather junior manager who has room to grow; preference is technology savvy, out-of-box thinker, able to brainstorm with
- Need to work on presentation
- People is our number one asset, don't ever count them out

This turned out to be the most motivating interview for me ever.