If you’re pursuing an IT Director job, you already realize there’s a special challenge in your search.
Your resume must be written to show technical aptitude, plus demonstrate leadership problem-solving and team management skills (crucial for a later move to VP or CIO positions).
Climbing the corporate ladder to a higher-level IT leadership role requires that you first take stock of your career success stories and the strength of your business skills.
A compelling IT Director resume will contain at least these 3 elements:
1 – Metrics-Driven Results.
Most IT Directors are charged with managing projects at an enterprise scale, creating new infrastructures that set the business up for growth, or resolving support issues that threaten business operations.
As shown in this award-winning IT Director sample resume, the scope and impact of your work should be clearly defined fro employers.
Answering these questions will help you pull in the metrics of most value to employers:
- What was the original business case and ROI for the project? Did it meet these goals?
- During implementation, what type of cost savings were achieved?
- How did your decisions affect the outcome of the project or initiative? For example, were you able to avert problems with vendors or consultants?
- What type of increases in Help Desk responsiveness and resolutions have you led?
Pulling in these figures will add credibility to your IT Director resume, and demonstrate the value of your leadership from a business angle – showing that you’ve far exceeded the perspective of a technician.
2 – Emphasis on Cost Savings.
As technology leaders rise up the corporate ladder, they’re expected to drive technology improvement, but only for the business’ sake. This means an increased focus on cost control—which is also a critical duty for most CIOs.
To derive cost savings from your projects, you may need to revisit user satisfaction and productivity numbers from previously deployed initiatives. Some areas to examine for cost savings include:
- Changes in IT budgets from a switch to different vendors
- Advances in automation that allowed departments to reduce headcount
- Cost avoidance from challenging IT or vendor strategy
Don’t forget to include the naturally occurring outcome of server or data center consolidations, where applicable, in your cost control metrics. These are all attention-grabbing figures that help justify a stronger salary increase and your merits as an IT leader.
3 – Examples of Strategic Planning Expertise.
One of the hallmarks to an IT leadership role, the development of long-term IT roadmaps should take center stage on your IT Director resume. Requiring you to align business needs with cutting-edge or emerging technologies, roadmap creation will help place you among top contenders for an IT Director role.
In addition, you can include the strategy for major initiatives, such as a shift in telecom direction, data warehousing function, or cloud development, as an example of your strategic technology perspective. You may have also set projections for supporting trouble ticket volume scaled to the size of the user base.
Most candidates for a Director, Vice President of IT, or CIO role will also have collaborated closely with executives to define the company’s future needs according to acquisitions, growth forecasts, or industry changes.
This involvement requires that you not only have access to confidential company projections, but also demonstrates your ability to grasp business needs and scale platforms accordingly.
In summary, your IT Director resume will quickly stand out among competitors if you take the time to review the scale, meaning, and impact of your work with the business.
There’s no shortage of employers that seek IT leaders capable of formulating and directing plans that support the business, while keeping an eye on best-fit technologies – so you’ll need to trumpet these skills to land your next role faster!
