Interviewing with a "Director of Quality" for an IT role?

July 9, 2023 5:19 AM

What should I expect when interviewing with a “Director of Quality” for an IT Sysadmin role?

I'm scheduled to have a 3rd round interview for mid-level Sysadmin position (I already got through a great 2nd round interview with the Senior Sysadmin/Hiring Manager)

The 3rd interview will be with the Jr. Sysadmin and the "Director of Quality".

I'm assuming the Jr. Sysadmin will be there mostly to see how they like me on a personal level. But I'm wondering what sorts of things the Director of Quality will be asking me (I've never heard of this job title before), and what sorts of questions should I be asking this person?

Based on the LinkedIn profile of the Director of Quality, they handle a lot of compliance related issues (it’s for a biotech company). But the job listing did not emphasize deep knowledge of regulations (only briefly mentioned knowledge of HIPAA as a “plus”)

Seems kinda strange that the hiring manager/Senior Sysadmin would send me to an additional interview with both the Junior Syasadmin AND the Director of Quality in the same interview, so I’m kinda confused as to what I should expect from this interview?

posted by melorama to Work & Money (10 answers total)

I too have have never heard of that title. If I were you I'd ask how they measure quality to get a feel about how objective or subjective the criteria is. Then I would ask about the supporting processes for the things that are measured to see how mature they are and to see if they are dysfunctional e.g. if quality is measured as successful change implementations then you'd want to ask about formal change management processes and how much of the organization is bought into it.
posted by mmascolino at 5:49 AM on July 9, 2023

It sort of sounds to me like they just lopped “Assurance” off the title for aesthetic or other reasons. Maybe look around for “QA job interview questions” or similar?
posted by staggernation at 6:26 AM on July 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

At my former job, we sometimes did these "pairing" interviews when neither of the interviewers had enough material for a solo interview. The topics didn't need to be related, especially if the interviewers had a good rapport with each other and were able to build off of each other's questions. So I wouldn't think too much of that on the surface. Regarding the director of quality, it's a compliance related person, they might be focused on things like processes/exceptions/access control - trying to make sure you're going to be able to work successfully in a heavily regulated environment.
posted by true at 6:47 AM on July 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: trying to make sure you're going to be able to work successfully in a heavily regulated environment.

This is what I was thinking--asking about your experience working within compliance frameworks/standards/whatever. If something new comes down the pipe, you'll presumably have to work with this person on implementation. Likewise, you'd probably work together on any auditing that's done.
posted by hoyland at 8:20 AM on July 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

I've been a Quality Director for two different manufacturing companies (optical discs and hotel keycards). The "Director" was because we had multiple sites across the US and the Quality Managers there reported to me and I reported to senior management, usually the Ops VP. I dealt with literally every other department because everyone had an impact on quality. I worked closely with IT but was never involved in interviewing IT hires. Mostly what I did with them was implement corrective and preventive actions in the systems used to support manufacturing - I'm talking like customizing SAP (we had an in-house SAP team) to change shop-floor paperwork to implement and improve processes. We also designed and implemented custom programs (e.g. to handle game keycodes). ISO and other compliance was also my responsibility but for IT that mostly meant having a document control system; in medical that might be a bigger concern that it was for me. Ad-hoc and custom reporting out of MRP and other systems seemed to be a constant need.

staggernation is correct that "Assurance" is an unspoken part of the title. "Quality Control" is one small part of "Quality Assurance".

From your description it's unknown if this person's responsibility covers only IT (which is possible) or if it for the entire company's operations; there would be a big difference in responsibilities between the two.

In either case you want to be the one that can help make this person's job easier. Determine their span and pain points and figure out how you and the new position can help them. Sorry I can't be more specific about what you might be asked; it does seem like an odd addition to the interviewing team.
posted by achrise at 8:38 AM on July 9, 2023 [5 favorites]

Director of Quality sounds like bullshit. This is a good person to ask about career path, promos, etc. That line of questions opens the door to light inquiries about time at company, why the director chose to join, what their growth path looked like. Try to sniff out nepotism or other cliques, a title like this might not have been acquired fairly.
posted by shock muppet at 11:06 AM on July 9, 2023

For a better answer- when I hired in IT, I always had to have Director+ in the loop. Sometimes I would borrow one that would never interact with the candidate at work. This person assessed long term potential.

I also conducted most interviews in pairs, just to get the maximum number of employees seeing the candidate. I don’t think I paired the Director, but it’s been a while. This particular interview sounds like pairing bias gone wrong.
posted by shock muppet at 11:11 AM on July 9, 2023

Best answer: I think if you wind up taking a job where a Director of Quality is a thing, you may be looped into work that involves validation of electronic records, which is not only documentation but potentially also systems used to produce it. Here's the relevant federal regulation. This was a significant aspect of one job I had several years ago, working in a space that the FDA cared about, but my expertise personally is limited, so I can only speak about how it affected my work. I remember that one side effect was that it was difficult to keep our computer systems up to date, because each upgrade required revalidation of the software. I think our version of the statistical software we used was six or seven years out of date, for instance, and I think our operating system was actually completely deprecated. I can't imagine this is the intent of the regulation, so it may be that, in a more mature company that has deeper experience with software validation, this feels less like handcuffs.
posted by eirias at 11:13 AM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: A quality director at a biotech company is likely concerned with IT to ensure that the software used to generate data meets FDA requirements for compliance with 21CFR part 11. Users need to have accounts, the software needs to have an audit trail, data needs to be demonstrably saved and backed up against loss, etc.
Quality director is a very important role at drug companies as they are in charge of defending the product / company to the FDA. I 100% disagree with shock muppet above. Don’t go in assuming this is a bullshit nepotism hire you are talking to.
posted by Vatnesine at 12:36 PM on July 9, 2023 [10 favorites]

Best answer: I'm assuming the Jr. Sysadmin will be there mostly to see how they like me on a personal level.

The Directory of Quality was probably invited for the same reason. Like Vatnesine suggests, this person is probably a business customer or product manager of the technology systems implemented by IT, so they work closely with the IT people, and have been invited to meet you as a potential co-worker.
posted by grog at 6:26 PM on July 9, 2023 [1 favorite]