How to hire your first CIO

As tech­nol­o­gy grows in impor­tance for a range of busi­ness­es, many will con­sid­er hir­ing a CIO. So what does the recruit­ment process involve and what skills should you seek in the win­ning can­di­date? 

Busi­ness­es now face huge demand for secure hybrid work­ing and inte­gra­tion of mul­ti­ple cloud-based apps and ser­vices, not to men­tion the need to incor­po­rate dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion into the broad­er busi­ness strat­e­gy. Isn’t it time some­one took charge, ensur­ing your tech­nol­o­gy strat­e­gy and busi­ness strat­e­gy are ful­ly aligned? 

If you’re at the point in your busi­ness jour­ney where you know that tech­nol­o­gy will play a cen­tral role in dri­ving growth and share­hold­er val­ue, you’re prob­a­bly ready for your first CIO, says Anna Bars­by, co-founder of con­sult­ing firm Tes­siant and for­mer CIO at Asda, Mor­risons and Hal­fords. 

“Adding a CIO to the man­age­ment team helps to dri­ve growth because it improves your IT strat­e­gy and effi­cien­cy. Mak­ing process­es more effi­cient reduces costs and frees up employ­ees to focus on high­er-val­ue tasks, which in turn dri­ves more val­ue,” says Bars­by. 

Specialist help 

Despite the wide­spread skills short­age, there’s a good chance you’ll be inun­dat­ed with appli­ca­tions for a new CIO role, says Joe Top­in­ka, a chief infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty offi­cer (CISO) with For­t­al­ice who pro­vides con­sult­ing and coach­ing to new CIOs.

“Recent­ly, the HR direc­tor at a mid-sized com­pa­ny told me they’d received 300 appli­cants with­in 24 hours of post­ing a vacan­cy for a CIO on LinkedIn,” says Top­in­ka. “There is great val­ue in find­ing an expe­ri­enced recruit­ment search team who have ‘been there and done that’ before,” he says. 

Bars­by also rec­om­mends using spe­cial­ist sup­port to iden­ti­fy the right can­di­date. “I’ve seen peo­ple just hire some­one they know already who knows about IT, and it gen­er­al­ly doesn’t work too well,” she says. 

That’s because a suc­cess­ful CIO must be a con­duit between your busi­ness lead­er­ship team and the IT team. They need to under­stand how to lever­age tech­nol­o­gy to deliv­er against a busi­ness strat­e­gy, as well as iden­ti­fy­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to use tech­nol­o­gy to improve busi­ness effi­cien­cy, per­for­mance and inno­va­tion. 

Your CIO will need to know about more than just tech­nol­o­gy. “The CIO role has changed enor­mous­ly over the last decade and the new breed of CIO is def­i­nite­ly peo­ple first, tech­nol­o­gy sec­ond. Mod­ern CIOs need to under­stand that tech­nol­o­gy is an enabler of peo­ple,” says Bars­by. 

Emotional intelligence

Work­ing with a spe­cial­ist recruiter can help you iden­ti­fy can­di­dates who com­bine the tech­ni­cal exper­tise required of a CIO with the nec­es­sary com­mu­ni­ca­tion and strate­gic skills. The CIO job descrip­tion needs to pri­ori­tise busi­ness strat­e­gy over tech­nol­o­gy, while also stress­ing the impor­tance of being able to lead and inspire peo­ple to embrace change, says Chris Under­wood, man­ag­ing direc­tor of exec­u­tive search firm Adas­trum Con­sult­ing. 

Under­wood sug­gests look­ing for a CIO with high lev­els of both dig­i­tal and emo­tion­al intel­li­gence. “To me, dig­i­tal intel­li­gence is under­stand­ing dig­i­tal inno­va­tion and how to exploit it to deliv­er against busi­ness objec­tives, while emo­tion­al intel­li­gence means some­one can unite teams to embrace change, which helps you to retain the best tal­ent and devel­op future lead­ers,” says Under­wood.   

An effec­tive CIO needs to be able to lead and inspire peo­ple, deliv­er­ing change while also watch­ing out for future change com­ing over the hill. Above all, they must be a good com­mu­ni­ca­tor, adds Bars­by. Your CIO will be a link between the tech world and the busi­ness. 

“They need to be an inter­preter in some ways, under­stand­ing what the busi­ness needs and con­vey­ing that to tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als,” Bars­by says. “Equal­ly, they must be able to explain to the board, in busi­ness terms, what is pos­si­ble with tech­nol­o­gy, and facil­i­tate a two-way con­ver­sa­tion between busi­ness and IT.” 

In some respects, hir­ing your first CIO might be the easy part. Now you need to be ready for the changes that their role will bring. Many busi­ness lead­ers employ a CIO to deliv­er change but then strug­gle to adopt that change them­selves, says Under­wood. 

“It’s very easy to talk about trans­for­ma­tion and change, but it can be real­ly chal­leng­ing when some­one comes into a CIO role and actu­al­ly wants to change how the busi­ness oper­ates. That change has to be agreed, accept­ed and cas­cad­ed through the senior lead­er­ship team if it’s going to be suc­cess­ful,” he says.