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Hello everyone. I thought this a great resource due to the altruistic nature and intelligence of leaders you find in this industry.

I’m currently working on a masters in MIS Management at Grand Canyon University and have been given an assignment for which I have few candidates I’m able to contact, and so is why I am posting here. Part of my assignment requires me to interview IT managers or those previously holding the position. If you are willing to assist, please answer the questions below, all or in part. I am aware that this will be taking time out of your day to do, so therefore anything you can do would be greatly appreciated. No information whatsoever will be used to identify you, and if you prefer, you can reach me by email instead. desertblizzard@me.com

Thanks again for the consideration, and here are the questions.

  • What is your job title?
  • How long have you been working in IT? How long have you been working as an IT manager?
  • What are the required skills and training needed to perform your role in your organization?
  • What are some of the significant differences between being a front-line IT professional and an IT manager?
  • To what extent do you communicate and collaborate with others both inside and outside of your organization?
  • How important is communication and collaboration in order to deliver business performance excellence in your organization?
  • From your perspective, describe the significance of building relationships with your followers based on mutual trust and respect.
  • What specific characteristics do you like to see in your followers?
  • Why do you value these characteristics the most?
  • Describe a typical “day in the life” for you at your job. What do you like most? What do you like least?
  • What are the most common issues you face on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis?
  • Determine the cause of the issues and describe the strategies for effectively managing them.
  • What advice would you give an IT professional who was recently promoted to a management position?
33 Spice ups
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Two words: Cat Facts.

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What is your job title?

IT Cowboy

How long have you been working in IT?

For a grip

How long have you been working as an IT manager?

For less than a grip

What are the required skills and training needed to perform your role in your organization?

Wranglin’ in them issues and users

What are some of the significant differences between being a front-line IT professional and an IT manager?

I twirl the rope now instead of watching dem boyz twirl it

To what extent do you communicate and collaborate with others both inside and outside of your organization?

I do a lot of yelling and rope twirling.

How important is communication and collaboration in order to deliver business performance excellence in your organization?

One time I had to make sure my herding dog (help desk) was steering them users the right way so I could twirl my rope and nab them. Collaboration is important.

From your perspective, describe the significance of building relationships with your followers based on mutual trust and respect.

All I care about for my followers is that they can keep up. I ride a fast horse, man.

What specific characteristics do you like to see in your followers?Why do you value these characteristics the most?

All I see is the horizon in the server room and myself endlessly riding towards it.

Describe a typical “day in the life” for you at your job. What do you like most? What do you like least?

I twirl my rope, wrangle them users, and ride towards the server room.

What are the most common issues you face on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis?

The fact that we still have end-users. It’s annoying.

Determine the cause of the issues and describe the strategies for effectively managing them.What advice would you give an IT professional who was recently promoted to a management position?

Ride that pony!

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What is your job title? Lots of them from Manager to VP and CTO

How long have you been working in IT? 30+ years

How long have you been working as an IT manager? 20+ years

What are the required skills and training needed to perform your role in your organization? A broad range of experience (tiger tamer, snake charmer, runs with wolves, swims with sharks and damn fine resume).

What are some of the significant differences between being a front-line IT professional and an IT manager? Herder, raconteur, well versed in Jedi mind tricks and very security conscious (when we circle the wagons at night: verify guns are pointed outward).

To what extent do you communicate and collaborate with others both inside and outside of your organization? Attend as few multi-person meetings as humanly possible unless warranted and an agenda exists.

How important is communication and collaboration in order to deliver business performance excellence in your organization? More so these days than in the past. Some delude themselves into believing excessive comms and collaboration lead to better work productivity.

From your perspective, describe the significance of building relationships with your followers based on mutual trust and respect. Building a team that can work together is > 80% of what leads to success IMO.

What specific characteristics do you like to see in your followers?
Humility, humor, attention to detail, measuring twice and cutting once.

Why do you value these characteristics the most? Saves me from heart attacks or additional hair loss.

Describe a typical “day in the life” for you at your job. Anything and everything to do with technology, interacting with people, troubleshooting, planning, designing; navigating office politics; begging, pleading and cajoling.

What do you like most? Interacting with people and getting stuff DONE.

What do you like least? Boomerang meetings- over weeks or months, the same people say the same things over and over and no progress is made

What are the most common issues you face on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis? Too many meetings and others attempting drive by requests directed toward team members.

Determine the cause of the issues and describe the strategies for effectively managing them. Poor management by others, nepotism, less than stellar (or nonexistent) accountability, etc.

What advice would you give an IT professional who was recently promoted to a management position? Take the time to gain a good understanding of the environment/political landscape and do not make any rash decisions. If you aren’t sure how to proceed ask your direct report or someone you trust.

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What is your job title? IT Manager.

How long have you been working in IT? 15+ years.

How long have you been working as an IT manager? 4 years (2 months, 17 days, 37 minutes…no, it’s really not that bad).

What are the required skills and training needed to perform your role in your organization? Tech generalist, strong communicator, even-tempered (especially in a crisis), ability to listen and value opinions of those around you, and the skillset to be the last line of defense for all members of the team. What’s training?

What are some of the significant differences between being a front-line IT professional and an IT manager? You’re now managing people, instead of managing systems. Sounds obvious, however it’s an seismic shift in your career and I’ve known many people who have tried to make the move, only to abandon it for something else.

To what extent do you communicate and collaborate with others both inside and outside of your organization? Internally - to the greatest extent possible, without being inefficient. Nothing is achieved easily without good communication and collaboration. Externally, as required.

How important is communication and collaboration in order to deliver business performance excellence in your organization? Critical.

From your perspective, describe the significance of building relationships with your followers based on mutual trust and respect. The only way people will share their best ideas with you is through a culture of mutual trust and respect (well, bribery also works … but mutual trust and respect is cheaper, so let’s stick with that). An effective team is empowered to act, takes calculated risks and is free to fail. Without that culture, you’re just breeding mediocrity.

What specific characteristics do you like to see in your followers? Why do you value these characteristics the most? The most important characteristic for me is someone who asks lots of questions, and can apply the knowledge gained to achieve something.

Describe a typical “day in the life” for you at your job. If I ever have a typical day, I’ll let you know!

What do you like most? I’m one of those sickening people who loves their job, so … most of the day-to-day is enjoyable! If I had to choose one thing: working with members of my team and watching their projects succeed.

What do you like least? Poorly-conceived business objectives being flushed down the plumbing to the IT department.

What advice would you give an IT professional who was recently promoted to a management position? Good luck? Seriously - get to know your team, their strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes, goals and dreams, anything and everything that you can. A business leader I have enormous respect for once told me “The biggest change in management is knowing when to get involved, and when to get out of the way. It’s usually the latter”. Never a truer word…

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I would like to answer your questions, but I can’t seem to quote your post properly on mobile so I’ll answer later if I have time…

EDIT: I’ve now taken time to reply in detail below. I hope this is helpful!

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I only have one interview question anymore.

I hand them a serial cable and ask them what it is.

If they tell me it’s a vga cable, we’re done.

Basics matter.

12 Spice ups
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What is your job title?
Director of Information Systems

How long have you been working in IT?
19 years

How long have you been working as an IT manager?
6 Months

What are the required skills and training needed to perform your role in your organization?
Resource Management (Time, staff, etc), communication skills and IT Project Management

What are some of the significant differences between being a front-line IT professional and an IT manager?
As an IT manager I have the weight representing the department. Everything I say or do has impact now where before it didn’t matter so much being a line employee. Also, work is very different. Being a line employee I can work on project A or Project B and thats it. Being a manager, I need to make sure my staff have the tools they need to do their job, the time to do it, and make sure they ARE doing it.

To what extent do you communicate and collaborate with others both inside and outside of your organization?
Almost every minute of every day.

How important is communication and collaboration in order to deliver business performance excellence in your organization?
Critical really, but I don’t know who it could be any other way. As an IT Manager I have to keep all of the other departments in the company working with the tools they need. If I am not communicating I’m not going to be effective

From your perspective, describe the significance of building relationships with your followers based on mutual trust and respect.What specific characteristics do you like to see in your followers?
I like to see honesty. If you don’t know the solution to a problem, fine, say so and we will find an answer. Don’t guess though because I can guess too. Lets work with facts and not waste anybody’s time.

Why do you value these characteristics the most?
Time is precious. We don’t have the staff we need so time is the most critical thing we have.

Describe a typical “day in the life” for you at your job. What do you like most?
Arrive at 7 am, get coffee and clear email inbox. Check in with staff and make sure everybody is there and they don’t need anything to start or continue their work. Deal with idiot vendors or outside salespeople calling on our helpdesk line. Ask them to not call the line again. Repeat 10 times throughout the day. Work on any projects and take calls from management or C level staff about new items or projects. Meeting with immediate manager (CFO) about current project status I haven’t had time to work on due to previously stated issues. Take calls from current vendors trying to sell us upgraded licensing or technology for this or next year. Work on projects, check email, clock out. Repeat.

What do you like least?
I feel like a fireman. Never really getting the time needed to fix things and I am only putting out fires/taking care of emergencies.

What are the most common issues you face on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis? Determine the cause of the issues and describe the strategies for effectively managing them.
Password management. Random computer reboots. Normal helpdesk stuff really.

What advice would you give an IT professional who was recently promoted to a management position?
Well, if they haven’t already started into it what they can expect is to go from a linear workflow (IE, with 3 projects, instead of normally working on 1, 2 and 3.) you need to be ready to inherit everybody else’s work and starting working to help them get it done. So, you now have staff A, B, and C, each with project 1, 2 and 3. You need to get Employee A something for project C, Keep employee B working on their project A because its the most important and then deal with Employee C having a flat tire or a spouse getting sick and having to take care of the kids at home. Its so random compared to the previous workflow that it stresses you dealing with the sudden and completely different workflow. You become the guy at the circus spinning all of those plates and if you stop, it all starts to come crashing down. One of the hardest things is making sure you don’t forget to work on something and keep everything moving forward. Make sure you use some kind of Task manager like in outlook. Find out what works for you and make sure you loop through it daily.

4 Spice ups
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Advice I would give to a staff member with a new promotion to management? Don’t shake things up, just for the sake of shaking things up. You don’t have to change things, to make a difference. Just being a great manager can be very refreshing. On the other side of things, if you’ve known for a while that operations have been pretty poor, do what you need to, to make a change.

5 Spice ups
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I imagined the scenery and it is beautiful.

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I want to be an IT Cowboy now.

3 Spice ups
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I think this guy works for the same place I do.

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What is your job title?

IT Manager and Software Developer

How long have you been working in IT? How long have you been working as an IT manager?

Donkeys years. Professionally about 17 years and about ten before that as a hobbyist. 3 years as an IT manager and 7 as a software developer.

What are the required skills and training needed to perform your role in your organization?

An in depth knowledge of IT and software development, aptitude to learn and potentially a background in calibration and/or engineering or experience of the calibration industry.

What are some of the significant differences between being a front-line IT professional and an IT manager?

In a small business not much, you can delegate but problems can still be escalated to you and will be often.

To what extent do you communicate and collaborate with others both inside and outside of your organization?

I am constantly communicating with internal users of the systems and third party suppliers and sometimes even customers that use our Web based systems we develop.

How important is communication and collaboration in order to deliver business performance excellence in your organization?

Without communication what we do would count for nothing.

From your perspective, describe the significance of building relationships with your followers based on mutual trust and respect.

People within the department and outside must trust and respect IT as we must trust and respect them. Without this trust the business is negatively affected as people bypass IT rather than logging tickets.

What specific characteristics do you like to see in your followers?

An aptitude to learn and an ability to problem solve without needing to escalate a problem.

Why do you value these characteristics the most?

Without these characteristics work gets done slower as everything must eventually be handled my myself.

Describe a typical “day in the life” for you at your job. What do you like most? What do you like least?

Generally each day at work for me is different and I don’t know what will happen when I walk into the office. This is what I like the most. I dislike dealing with repeated issues which indicates a problem not properly fixed the first time it happened.

What are the most common issues you face on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis?

Daily: Internet slowness and routing. Weekly: fixing software bugs. Monthly: dealing with supplier cock-ups.

Determine the cause of the issues and describe the strategies for effectively managing them.

The cause of most issues is supplier issues e.g. software companies and their bugs. The only way to manage them is to identify and report them to each supplier and put workarounds in place to prevent them being an issue.

What advice would you give an IT professional who was recently promoted to a management position?

Don’t let the users, suppliers or systems grind you down :slight_smile:

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My first thought was “when do you use a serial cable anymore” and then I stopped. Yup, its there a lot, definitely more than I would think.

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I asked my boy an interview question… He gave a solid answer:

  • Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

  • I want to be a cowboy. Or a dinosaur.

  • Fair enough! :slight_smile:

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