CIOs in transition: 5 tips for landing your next IT leadership job

At some point in your career, you’re likely to find yourself in transition, having left an IT leadership job without a new one lined up. While you may have planned or negotiated an exit, very often such departures are beyond your direct control, due to a leadership change, acquisition, or another strategic event.

Ask your network, and you’ll likely find IT leader peers who have been in a similar situation at least once in their career. I was in transition twice and wasn’t ready to handle the networking, persistence, and stress that comes with finding a new opportunity.

Finding a new job when you’re in transition has different challenges than hopping from one job to another does. Time feels like it slows down without your past job responsibilities, and you have to manage your schedule, which includes learning, networking, and taking care of your mental health.

How you manage your time, emotions, and priorities during the transition impacts the opportunities, odds of getting offers, and your psyche. What are key activities to focus on and skills to develop that can help you land a new, exciting role faster? Following are five ways to uncover opportunities and keep yourself primed for new leadership challenges.

Build your network continuously

Joe Puglisi, former CIO and now investor, advisor, and board member, leads a weekly call for the Society of Information Management (SIM) Members in Transition program. He emphasizes the importance of networking continuously, especially while employed, and to leverage your network when you are in a transition.

“It is not who you know, but rather, who knows you,” he says. “There is an art to staying visible and relevant, which is critical. Networking is a lifelong endeavor. Know your brand and advertise it relentlessly.” 

Top CIOs recognize that networking while they have the role can pay significant dividends if and when they find themselves in transition. They manage networking with other professional development activities such as attending conferences, reading leadership books, and participating in social media.

Once in transition, they develop weekly outreach plans, schedule time with people in their network, and share a clear direction on the types of opportunities they seek. One recommendation is to leverage a lightweight CRM and treat networking like a lead-generation activity, a skill that also builds better understanding and appreciation of sales and marketing functions.

What does networking mean, and what activities lead to opportunities?

“Never pass up the opportunity to have a conversation with someone, regardless of their level or area of expertise,” suggests Kevin Miller, CTO of IFS North America. “If you want to be an effective leader, practice viewing the world through the lens of the person you’re communicating with, and understanding their point of view is crucial for being a good leader. The connections you make and even simply the ability to make those connections will carry you throughout your journey to the C-suite.”

Some people perceive networking as small talk or conversations at conferences with people you’ve just met. While those are examples, there are other networking practices IT leaders can engage in more consistently through online communities and social media. Martin Davis, CIO and managing partner at Dunelm Associates, offers these suggestions:

• Review your online presence, how you come across to others, and what your LinkedIn profile says about you. Rework your profile to target who you are now and where you are going, not who you were 10 years ago.
• Contribute posts, comment on others’ posts, join groups, and answer questions on LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
• Join online events such as the Coffee with Digital Trailblazers meeting on Fridays at 11am ET on LinkedIn or the #CIOChat meeting on Thursdays at 2pm on X.
• Start a blog or contribute articles to media sites and other established blogs.

Other networking opportunities for CIO and IT leaders include:

• Communities such as Apex Assembly, the CIO Association of Canada, the Gartner Peer Community, the Global CIO Forum, HotTopics CIO Community, the IDC CIO Executive Council, the MIT Sloan CIO Community, SIM, the Digital Trailblazer Community, The Technology Leadership Board, and the Women Tech Network.
• CIOs and IT leaders local and virtual IT leadership events from C-Vision, CDM Media, Constellation Research, ET-x, Evanta, Foundry, Forrester, Gartner, HMG Strategy, Info-Tech, Sinc, and others. 
• Open and free-to-register events scheduled by public cloud providers and other technology companies.

Assess your skills and intangibles

Networking will help IT leaders in transition find opportunities, test their pitches, and learn about tech trends. Beyond networking, however, CIOs should also develop their soft skills and leadership competencies even — or especially — when in transition. Start with a thorough self-reflection on communication tendencies, collaboration skills, abilities to inspire teams, and competencies to influence colleagues.

Joanne Friedman, PhD and CEO of Connektedminds, says CIOs and IT leaders should become pragmatic vision painters and must develop their “E-skills” of being empathetic, displaying entrepreneurial mindsets, developing deep expertise in areas of interest, broadening their experiences, and finding ways to empower people.

Puglisi recommends adding a sixth E for enthusiasm, especially around driving transformative change, and I add E for educate, seeking people who have used their expertise to teach leadership, colleagues, and their teams. Heather May, president of May Executive Search, adds an eighth E for excellence, because “you want to show what you’ve accomplished and demonstrate the gains you’ve driven,” she says. 

Soft skills and collaborative competencies are broad categories, so CIOs should focus on the ones that resonate with their leadership styles. For example, Trude Van Horn, CIO at Rimini Street, recommends, “To secure the role of a CIO, it’s essential to develop diverse skills, including bravery, resilience, creative solutioning, building collaboration, and talent magnetism.”

Ross Meyercord, CEO of Propel Software, adds, “An accurate CIO job description should list two core attributes: thick skin and excellent listening skills. Without these, no CIO or CEO could succeed or even survive.”

These are examples of soft skills that IT leaders assimilate through experience but rarely have the time to study and develop intentionally while busy on the job. During a transition period, CIOs recommend building such skill sets by deep-diving into practices that focus on communication, collaboration, team building, and influencing. Top areas include product management, agile methodologies, design thinking, continuous improvement, and change management practices.

Practice job-landing skills

It’s discouraging to find out you came in second or third for a role, left to second-guess your interview process performance. Dunelm’s Davis suggests developing your marketing skills and finding colleagues, advisors, and mentors willing to help polish up your interviewing skills.

It is important to research any prospective employer, its markets, key products, and competitors. May, Friedman, and Puglisi suggest rehearsing answers to the following interview prompts:

• Share an experience where you addressed a significant challenge with your team or organization that required a deep understanding of individual and collective concerns.
• Explain your accomplishments and what you’ve done in relationship to the industry, company, and role.
• Describe your role — and skills you apply — in digital transformation initiatives drawing from past accomplishments relevant to the position.

John Patrick Luethe, managing partner at Redapt, recommends defining your target markets.

“Some people are happy at big companies and the benefits that go with it. If they get put in a 50-person startup, it throws them for a loop because they can’t take their big company mindset and apply it,” he says, adding that learning your business model preferences and whether you have more customer affinity for a product, service, or consulting business is also important.

Brush up on the business impact of emerging tech

Hiring executives expect CIOs and IT leaders to increase the technical capabilities of their businesses. Unfortunately, CIOs spend so much time on the job developing executive relationships, meeting customers, and leading teams that developing a deep understanding of modern technologies can fall behind.

“Whether you’re a new or experienced CIO, it is critically important to be attentive to rapidly evolving technological changes and continue developing your expertise in a fast-paced industry,” says Lori Beer, global CIO at JPMorgan Chase. “Today, more than ever, CIOs need to be technical and know the business they support, as businesses across industries increasingly rely on technology for their success. CIOs must understand the business needs, as well as the technical possibilities, risks, and costs, and help lead the path toward a viable solution.”

Focus on technologies in demand in your industries of interest. These days, AI and security are broadly applicable, Connektedminds’ Friedman says, suggesting CIOs in transition “learn the fundamentals of emerging technologies such as Python, machine learning, neural networks, and AI, plus brush up on newer security and privacy tools.”

Other focus areas might include cloud architectures, devops, and data governance, depending on what is prominent in your target sector. 

Here, Friedman also sees the upside of transition downtime: “CIOs in transition have a tremendous opportunity to focus on technologies that may not be headliners today but will be within a 12-month time frame, new business models (regenerative or circular economy), and industries such as those that support autonomous vehicles, robotics, and cobots.”

Volunteer tech leadership at nonprofits

The last priority can be a win-win for CIOs who use part of their time to leverage their expertise on behalf of a nonprofit. Doing so helps IT leaders build connections, learn different types of operations, and investigate new resourceful solutions, all while impacting a nonprofit’s cause.  

“CIOs can learn so much by volunteering for a nonprofit, joining their governance boards, or assisting in the trenches,” says Helen Knight, CIO of Legal Aid Alberta. “You’ll witness firsthand the devastating impacts of underinvesting in technology, from not spending enough time investigating the problem before rushing to a solution to learning how expensive ‘free’ technology can become over time. The staggering amount of technological debt and the barriers it creates to deliver much-needed social services will leave you with a much bigger appreciation of the importance of considering the impact of every change to the technological ecosystem.”

CIOs in transition who volunteer at nonprofits can also improve their mental health and feel good about their impacts. It’s important to stay confident and enthusiastic while in transition, and helping others is one way to stay upbeat, learn, and network toward new opportunities.