Executive career / interview coaching in Toronto?

May 18, 2018 9:50 AM

A friend is looking for ideas on how to be a more compelling candidate during the in-person interview process for "director" level IT management positions in the education, civil service, medical etc sectors -- in Toronto.

The candidate's resume and experience are strong, but it seems like there have been too many post second interview, final round, thanks-but-no-thanks results. They just don't know what's missing from the whole package to ultimately seal the deal. Probably needing in-person mentoring sessions, but where/with whom? Other ideas welcome.

posted by seanmpuckett to Work & Money (3 answers total)

As someone who is a "Director of Technology" and without more information about your friend, here's what I'll give:

1. He's no longer a developer or whatever position that just needed to get filled. It isn't as easy to get a job going up which is hard for a lot of people in tech to understand. If I was still a developer, or even a bit higher I would just need to hang a flag out my window to get a job.

2. I've had the same experience. Either funding gets cut, there's a personality issue, or a lot of things that have nothing to do with your friend. At that level the C-Suite needs to have a good "gut" feeling about you, sounds stupid but it is true.

3. Need to look the part. This takes some resume juicing, again, I don't know what you're applying for but I had to emphasize my ability to increase revenue and gain clients. That's my job now, I do very little with technology except listen to people complain, try to make sure they don't quit.

4. Again, did he work with large teams and large clients? Or large projects if he wasn't client facing? I have a lot of the largest companies on my resume and that impresses people. I technically had 200 developers underneath me, which was not true really, but on org charts it was. That impressed people. You need to speak on delegation and how you manage large teams, and importantly offshore teams.

5. Since it sounds like you don't make a product, what did your friend do to cut revenue? Improve quality? Director level positions aren't about knowledge of IT but of, well, directing technology. If they are not director level yet, they need to show things on their resume and in interviews that show they are director level quality. No one cares if you can script, or whatever your friend does, but they do care they can run a department independently.

That's pretty much all I can give, I mean I've had interviews go incredible, get great feedback and just die. I think I spent 6 months looking for my next place. Director isn't as clear cut as "developer that knows AngularJS" so some companies want really hands on, some want really high level, etc.
posted by geoff. at 11:18 AM on May 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: I'll gently correct the assumption about my friend's gender: I used "they" intentionally.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:43 AM on May 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

I found Jennifer Dimitroff (formerly at Optimum Talent, now with Verity International) very helpful for unpacking some fairly deep-seating interview problems I had.
posted by scruss at 1:50 PM on May 18, 2018 [1 favorite]