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Mapping Your Career Strategy
To reach the IT management peak, you can work your way up at one company or move from a departmental role at a large organization to the top post at a smaller one, among other options. In fact, nearly 60% of survey respondents worked at a larger company before accepting their current position at a midsized one, like United States Tennis Association CIO Larry Bonfante.
Bonfante joined the New York-based USTA, which has roughly $225 million in annual revenue, just over four years ago after a decade of working on global infrastructure projects at the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc.
Like other respondents who participated in follow-up interviews for the survey, Bonfante wasn't looking for a new job when a former colleague telephoned him about the CIO job at USTA. But it put him among the 42% of respondents who found their current position through a personal connection, the most frequent response. The next most common: in-house promotions (21%) and recruiters (18%).
For Bonfante, the decision to become a midmarket CIO and leave behind the security that sometimes comes with a larger institution was driven by the chance to make work exciting again.
"I'm not Donald Trump, but you get to a certain point where you are already paying the bills. You have kids in private schools and a mortgage. And you want to be in a place where you can make a difference -- have an impact," says Bonfante, 46.
Stuart Gross, director of IT and security at the privately held Southern California Physicians Managed Care Services in San Diego, moved from Connecticut so he could enjoy year-round golf, not full-time work. "I had no job. I didn't have a line on a job. I met a recruiter socially. She called me a week later and told me she had a desperate client who needed someone for a project right away."
Working first as a consultant, Gross was offered a full-time job as a member of the senior management team a few months later and has been the company's senior IT manager for the past four years. Gross is among the 16% of IT directors surveyed who say they report to the CEO. "I told them I didn't care so much about the title," he says, "as long as I reported to the CEO. Otherwise, you are reporting to a user who is competing with other users for IT services." Like the majority of survey participants who have more than 20 years in IT, Gross has a résumé filled with decades of IT experience in manufacturing and consulting. It was the challenge of a new industry that attracted him to the health care job, he says.
Today he enjoys strengthening his CV with IT security classes, seminars and networking on crucial issues such as health care compliance and regulations. Mostly, he enjoys being part of a senior management team that considers IT a crucial part of its overall business strategy, he says.
"At 60 years old," Gross says, "I wouldn't be working someplace I didn't like."
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