Job Interview for a CIO Position at a Community College

During 2009 and 2010, I was in the market for a Chief Information Officer (CIO) role as the university I was serving as CIO was shut down by the Board of Regents and all of us were laid off. The experience of interviewing was fascinating and I have shared a few stories in my book Cybersecurity Leadership. However, this is a unique story that shows that regardless of how well you do in a job interview, too many unpredictable factors can knock you out and someone else can be selected based on a criteria that was previously unknown.

Human resources informed me that I was among 10 candidates chosen for first round of on-campus interviews at a community college. This did not sound strange at the outset. However, when I entered the room, I found 18 people in the room.

In public university academic settings an on-campus interview of two finalists can include a meeting open to the public. So, I thought they may have narrowed it down to a couple of finalists and this was an open meeting.

Soon, the chair asked panel members to introduce themselves. I heard 18 introductions and thought 18 committee members would make decision-making truly unwieldy. The chair mentioned that the institution had international flavor with 170 countries represented. I quipped, “I am a good fit then because I have international flavor.”? When the English professor introduced herself, I added, “English is my favorite language.” Both interjections drew peals of laughter. A set of laminated questions was in front of me.

Then 18 people took turns in reading out questions. For the sake of brevity, I have included a smaller sample of the total questions. However, my responses are exactly as I gave them during the interview (to make sure I remembered, I came home and wrote down the entire interview and responses):

1. Why do you think you are the right fit for this position in a community college?

I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth – but I was fortunate to get an education which allowed me to compete for a position like this.? Many students here are like me -- not born rich, but can be given a chance for a better life.? I would enjoy being a part of that.? In addition, we are entering a period of financial austerity and I know how to utilize limited funds in a judicious manner.

2. What are three values you use to guide your management style???

First is integrity – a value which takes a lifetime to achieve but can be lost in a moment. ? Second is teamwork – together we make up for each other’s weaknesses.? Third is customer service – because customers equate to jobs.???

3. How do you recruit, retain and train your workforce?

I screen candidates for ethics, integrity, and team spirit.? Technical skills can be taught. Since there are limits to monetary rewards, I am generous with non-monetary rewards due to an unlimited supply of these.? I focus on creating a positive and fun environment for everyone.

4. What are the issues for libraries in community colleges???

We used to be geographically bound. Our customers used to be the community around us – now our customers have more choices but we too have more opportunities. Libraries are becoming electronic gateways to other library systems.??

5. Please describe a major change you implemented where there was a resistance to the change.

We wanted to implement a new VOIP system. Faculty and staff were concerned about stability and phone numbers changing.? I promised to keep everyone’s last 4 digits the same and planned for a 6 month transition. This overcame objections and we had a successful implementation.???

6. How do you make short-term and strategic plans?

I look at organizational goals. If the organization has a strategic plan, I align the IT plan to the organization’s plan.? Then I look around for ways to finance the vision.

7. Name three new IT developments which are impacting educational institutions.?

First is the need to support any device from anywhere.? Second, we need much higher levels of security. Third industry developments such as cloud computing and software as a service allow services to be available from outside our organization.? We need to focus on management of data, information and services regardless of where they reside.???

8. What do you do think about faculty members who want to use their own e-mail services from places like Google or Microsoft?

We should encourage faculty and staff to use college branded e-mail when interacting with the public. People do not like restrictive policies which hamper their work. Disk space is cheap and with liberal policies people usually use institution-branded systems.

9. Can you describe how you go about developing a budget?

Start with goals.? Create long term and short term priorities and develop a funding plan.??

At the end, with 6 minutes left, I was given the opportunity to ask questions. I asked one:? At the end of one year, what would I have to have achieved for you to give me a good evaluation?? The responses gave me a good idea of what the institutional priorities were.

Within a few weeks I learned that the panel was having difficulty selecting two finalists. HR asked me what was the largest budget I had managed. Note that this question is quite unreasonable because larger budgets can often mean serious inefficiencies. My work history had always been to maintain most of the budgets with the client organizations who would benefit from the projects. Thus my budgets were always smaller compared to other organizations with centralized technology budgets.

After a couple of months, I learned two finalists were selected based on the size of their previous organization’s budget. In other words, regardless of interview performance, due to the inability of 18 people to agree on the top two candidates, they decided to choose the two finalists based on budget size. Certainly three, five or even seven member panels are quite common in academic settings – but 18 people can never be a good number for an interview panel.? Decision-making in such a large group is too unwieldy.?

Lessons to be learned from this story:

1) This organization could never have been a good one to work in as its top executive leadership was clearly broken. So was the HR leadership who failed to set up a proper interview and screening process. Even with 18 people, they should have established an onjective scoring system and selected two with the highest total scores.

2) When size of the budget managed is more important than the digital strategy, I would never be the right fit because my entire career had been to get rid of inefficient organizations and budgets and streamline them through the strategic use of technology.

3) Life will screen us out of the inappropriate opportunities. So we should never lament a lost opportunity or failure of an organization to select us. The right organization will select us. The wrong ones will not select us. This is a remarkable life truth that has guided me properly every time. In this case, I knew I had provided good answers to all the questions. In fact, the Chair followed me out to the rest room and told me he was very impressed and I should surely hear back soon. Later after the debacle he even called me up to let me know that he was truly disappointed with the final screening method they chose to select the finalists.

4. The most qualified candidate will not be picked if the selection process is broken or unqualified executives are in charge at the top.