Seeking your next CIO role?
Your CIO resume must convey the leadership, business, and technology skills required for a successful IT executive career – far beyond a simple listing of technologies and projects.
To be effective, a CIO resume should focus on your ability to serve as a strategic advisor to the executive team – reinforcing your personal brand as an influencer who moves the business forward with right-fit technologies.
The best executive resume writers adept in CIO resumes will take a step back from the technology itself – showing how you build buy-in for new solutions and deliver company-wide impact. This strategy will ensure that your resume appeals to recruiters, Boards, CEOs, and employers.
In my presentation on IT Executive Resumes & LinkedIn Profiles to the National Resume Writers’ Association Conference, I outlined key tips for developing strong and compelling CIO resumes (as well as those for CTO, CDO, CISO, and other technology leaders).
Here are recommendations for finding the best resume writing service for your CIO career:
Find out if your CIO resume writer uses projects and technologies as supporting detail.
Your career is built on benefit to the business, which can include bringing in new standards, vendor solutions, methodologies, and systems – all delivering results affecting expenses and growth.
Therefore, your CIO resume needs to cover the overall effect of your leadership (not just the nuances of each project), as well as the speed in which you build the buy-in needed to achieve results.
Your CIO resume writer should hone in on results that include these and similar achievements, as well as the speed in which you’ve implemented them:
- New and distinguishing initiatives
- Digital transformation
- Machine learning
- Automation and RPA
- Speed of implementation
- AI
- First-in-industry use of new technologies
- Improvements to flagship products
- Better customer and user experiences
- Business transformation
- Revenue results
If you’ve revived and completed projects that previous CIOs failed to deliver, or you’ve turned around the IT organization to earn new levels of respect and credibility with stakeholders, these accomplishments should also be featured in your new resume.
Questions to ask your CIO resume writer:
- How do you identify the most important projects in my career?
- How will you know what technologies, if any, to feature in my resume?
- What is your familiarity with platforms, solutions, and concepts? How will you incorporate these in my CIO resume?
- Where can I see examples of CIO resumes that you’ve developed?
Ask your resume writer if they understand CDO, CTO, or CISO roles.
An executive resume writing service for CIOs must be able to discern the nuances among Chief Digital Officers, Chief Technology Officers, VPs of Engineering, and other technical leaders.
You may be charged with digital transformation and IT operations, focusing on internal stakeholder needs and cost controls. However, you may also be stepping in as a CTO to direct externally facing product strategy, or as a CDO to handle digital strategy and automation.
Questions to ask your CIO resume writer:
- What do you understand about the differences among the CTO, CDO, CIO, and CDO roles?
- How often have you worked with specialty areas in IT, such as cybersecurity or digital transformation?
- Can you describe how this expertise should be incorporated into my CIO resume?
- What personal experience do you have in technology fields or recruiting?
Determine if your CIO resume writer has a deep grasp of technology and IT careers.
By studying technology terms, reading ComputerWorld and CIO.com publications, visiting vendor sites such as Cisco or VMware, and reviewing CIO LinkedIn profiles, a resume writer can gain more familiarity with the demands and challenges faced by CIOs as strategic advisors to the business.
Questions to ask your CIO resume writer:
- What resources do you use to maintain knowledge of new trends and concepts in IT?
- What do your other CIO resume clients find most helpful about working with you to elicit their personal brands and technology career achievements?
- What other types of technology leadership resumes (such as for an IT Director, VP of Engineering, etc.) have you written?
- How often do you update your IT knowledge and how much will I need to explain to you?
Ask your resume writer if they know what hiring authorities seek in a CIO.
Frequently, the audience for a CIO resume will be a non-technical leader, such as a CEO or CFO. These executives are interested in how you measure and control costs, while delivering the best technology solutions and ROI.
In addition, the Board, company stakeholders, and IT teams will also want to vet your background; these groups want to see how the CIO candidate will build consensus for new solutions (especially before millions are invested in new initiatives).
Your new technical teams are heavily invested in how emerging technology experience will shape their careers – and therefore want a CIO who promotes their career development, while also retaining them as valued players.
Questions to ask your CIO resume writer:
- How familiar are you with the perspective of a Board member, CEO, or CFO?
- What levels of IT candidates have you worked with in the past?
- How many CIO resumes have you written that gained interviews and what commentary did the resume generate?
Find out how your CIO resume writer will mine for the right information.
Many CIOs, who are juggling cost pressures and selecting strategies to keep their employers competitive, do not have the time or perspective to fill out lengthy worksheets.
A top CIO resume writing service will personally interview you in order to understand the context of your achievements and provide insight into the qualities sought by employers.
It goes without saying that your CIO resume service should be able to help you identify the most current technologies and methodologies to include in the resume, rather than simply dumping potentially outdated technical skills onto your resume (which can turn off recruiters).
Questions to ask your CIO resume writer:
- What methods do you use to gather information for my CIO resume? Will you personally interview me or will I need to fill out a lengthy questionnaire?
- How will you know when you have sufficient data to produce my resume?
- What data will you include – or trim – from my new CIO resume?
Finding the best resume writing service for a CIO will take some research on your part.
Executive resume writing services have areas of specialty (just like any subject matter expert).
You’ll fare best with a writer who understands technology, business needs, emerging technical skills, and your strategic role in the C-suite.
