Best practice: the perfect CIO CV

* Education

Computer Science is no longer a de facto requirement at degree level for IT leadership. The CVs of the IT leaders interviewed for this article had a combination of politics and engineering Bachelors or no university degree at all. But the ideal candidate has a high IQ and is able to assimilate a great deal of technical and business information and see the underlying shape of it quickly.

* Career Path

Working at organisations that people have heard of lends more credibility to your job path. Chopping and changing matters less than a consistent progress upward at companies that have cachet.

* Roles And Responsibilities

To attain a top, business-facing job it is no use simply moving up the standard IT ladder of developer, analyst/programmer, team leader, project manager, and so on. This will focus you too much as a solely technical person. At some point, try to work in a parallel business function, ideally a separate profit centre, as an IT person if necessary, but perhaps as a middle manager with a clearer business remit. You are moulding yourself as a rounded business person who knows what the bottom line is – prove it.

* Skills Mix

Can you match most of these characteristics: you are visionary, understand where the business is going and what it will look like; you are revenue not cost focused, and can provide ways to grow income not just control cost; possess collaboration skills of the first rank; you have worked on successful change management projects; you want to break the rules and create new ones using imagination and tenacity; you are an expert on corporate governance; you are a superb human capital engineer, able to spot and nurture talent? If you can claim to have these characteristics you would be a heavy-hitter in today’s job stakes.

* Personality

It is almost a cliché of IT management, but that does not make it any less true. The introverted techie of old is not the sort of person chief executives want to lead their business-IT initiatives. Instead, concentrate on soft skills and aptitudes: ability to listen and communicate, the two are not always synonymous; awareness of corporate politics; consistent marketing, not selling, of your skills, expertise and desire to contribute. Think about working with a business coach or taking some independent training or assessment as a first step to working on any weak spots.