Feedback on Resume
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@wirestyle22 said in Feedback on Resume:
The Arc: I was the director of IT. I was responsible for every appliance, server, workstation, etc. All devices. I handled all of the purchasing in relation to IT. I was the sole IT person covering 33 sites all over ocean county (very large county).
Sole IT person and "director" cannot go together. To be a director you must have a department large enough that the only people reasonably reporting to you are managers. Managers who have their own teams. The director term is only reasonable in a Fortune 2000 or so. And even in the lower numbers there, it's often pretty absurd. Unless you have, say, 200 IT people reporting up to you, consider director to be lying. And that's hardly the only deciding factor, but it's the easy one. I've had 100 reports and been the senior most director in a company and I won't use that term on my resume because, even though it was my title and I could and DID fire even executives... it would be a grey area for me.
So let me ask you, as director, did you have hundreds or reports? Could you fire any non-executive in the company yourself, without needing approvals from anyone? If not, you'd better not use that term anywhere.
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Terms:
Manager means you manage people. If you say you are an "IT Manager" you'd better have a small department that reports to you. But it does not imply that there are more managers under you. It could be direct technical reports. An IT manager might only have a team of three or four reports. That's not much of a manager, but it's a manager technically. There is almost never an IT manager in the SMB.
Director means manager of managers. A director implies control of a full department with a full stack of people. To use the term director, assume that you "own" a department and all of the techs report to managers and the managers to you. There is no SMB that has a real director.
CIO means you sit on the executive board driving the company and there is zero IT oversight over you. Both things must be true or you are not a CIO. Directors would normally report to a CIO, but not necessarily. Often you have one or the other, not both. Or one person is both.
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@scottalanmiller said in Feedback on Resume:
So let me ask you, as director, did you have hundreds or reports? Could you fire any non-executive in the company yourself, without needing approvals from anyone? If not, you'd better not use that term anywhere.
That means there were only 2 directors and everyone else was a manager, which i guess is accurate.
Alright. I was responsible for all IT related matters with the exception of personnel?
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@wirestyle22 said in Feedback on Resume:
@scottalanmiller said in Feedback on Resume:
So let me ask you, as director, did you have hundreds or reports? Could you fire any non-executive in the company yourself, without needing approvals from anyone? If not, you'd better not use that term anywhere.
That means there were only 2 directors and everyone else was a manager, which i guess is accurate.
Were they really directors? Even outside of IT it is rare to have a director in the SMB. Most SMBs are smaller than a single department size.
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@wirestyle22 said in Feedback on Resume:
Alright. I was responsible for all IT related matters with the exception of personnel?
That's as generic IT generalist as it gets. That's old school LAN Admin. Don't look for special titles or inflation when you did the "generic SMB IT job." It's a good job, that's not a bad thing. But it's "every SMB IT Job" really. This is why we talk about the generalist, what you describe is what every lone IT person is like.
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This thread has encouraged me to change my title to IT Generalist on Linkedin rather than keep my company-provided title of Network Administrator.
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@scottalanmiller said in Feedback on Resume:
@wirestyle22 said in Feedback on Resume:
@scottalanmiller said in Feedback on Resume:
So let me ask you, as director, did you have hundreds or reports? Could you fire any non-executive in the company yourself, without needing approvals from anyone? If not, you'd better not use that term anywhere.
That means there were only 2 directors and everyone else was a manager, which i guess is accurate.
Were they really directors? Even outside of IT it is rare to have a director in the SMB. Most SMBs are smaller than a single department size.
Yep. Seen this often.
I've seen places with multiple directors, and all of them were not directors. No larger than only 20 people in size. One 'Sales Director', who had the actual sales people report straight to them... Not lots of regional sales managers reporting to them... but the actual sale staff. The cold callers... they are not director.
Its just like 'IT Director' - actually no, you just replace the toner and check the server has a green light.
See it so often.
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If I were ever 'IT Director' or something, i'd expect to have lots of remote 'IT Managers' reporting to me worldwide, each with a team of Techies under them... If I were ever called that, but only a sysadmin... yep, i'd lie and call myself sysadmin on resume... otherwise its a lie.
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Where does a Director fall in comparison to an Executive?
Considering I clearly have never experienced the levels of management that Scott has, I have only ever seen directors report to executives, so a director could never fire one, they are lower than executives.
But according to Scott's comments, when he was a director, he was over the top of executives.. so I'm wondering what is the fortune 500 management chain look like from the lowest employee to the CEO/board.
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@dashrender said in Feedback on Resume:
Where does a Director fall in comparison to an Executive?
Considering I clearly have never experienced the levels of management that Scott has, I have only ever seen directors report to executives, so a director could never fire one, they are lower than executives.
But according to Scott's comments, when he was a director, he was over the top of executives.. so I'm wondering what is the fortune 500 management chain look like from the lowest employee to the CEO/board.
I think it depends on the company. Its all bollocks anyway. Our sales people here have a job title of 'Business Executive'... pfft. Nope, they are 'Salesperson'. Why they cant be called that I don't know. Nothing wrong with it, its what they do. They sell. but the business card... yep... 'Executive'.
Is it reasonable to remove job title from a resume? Just company, tenure and what you achieved...
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Getting companies, SMBs, HR, hiring manageers, and IT people to use proper titles based on proper terminology is bit like trying to achieve world peace.
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Although world peace is probably easier since there are only hundreds of world leaders involved. Not millions of personnel and companies that have been set in their ways for years.
Let me ask you this. How often do you see companies that follow the @scottalanmiller guideline for titling positions? 20%, 10%, 5%, 1%, .000001%?
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@irj said in Feedback on Resume:
How often do you see companies that follow the @scottalanmiller guideline for titling positions? 20%, 10%, 5%, 1%, .000001%?
0% in my case
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@wirestyle22 said in Feedback on Resume:
@irj said in Feedback on Resume:
How often do you see companies that follow the @scottalanmiller guideline for titling positions? 20%, 10%, 5%, 1%, .000001%?
0% in my case
Same here
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The titles where I am (at least as far as IT is concerned) don't seem to match the "real world."
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I think it will be interesting to see the responses to my resume though. I'll screenshot any pertinent information.
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@wirestyle22 said in Feedback on Resume:
@irj said in Feedback on Resume:
How often do you see companies that follow the @scottalanmiller guideline for titling positions? 20%, 10%, 5%, 1%, .000001%?
0% in my case
Ditto - but other than the one larger company I worked for, the rest have been SMB.
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@dashrender said in Feedback on Resume:
@wirestyle22 said in Feedback on Resume:
@irj said in Feedback on Resume:
How often do you see companies that follow the @scottalanmiller guideline for titling positions? 20%, 10%, 5%, 1%, .000001%?
0% in my case
Ditto - but other than the one larger company I worked for, the rest have been SMB.
My interest is to get out of the SMB but I'm not sure how clear I made that in this thread honestly. A lot of posts.
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@wirestyle22 said in Feedback on Resume:
@dashrender said in Feedback on Resume:
@wirestyle22 said in Feedback on Resume:
@irj said in Feedback on Resume:
How often do you see companies that follow the @scottalanmiller guideline for titling positions? 20%, 10%, 5%, 1%, .000001%?
0% in my case
Ditto - but other than the one larger company I worked for, the rest have been SMB.
My interest is to get out of the SMB but I'm not sure how clear I made that in this thread honestly. A lot of posts.
This makes me wonder, how many non SMB's are there. There's SMEs and then Enterprises.
I think Scott said SME's start around 2000 employees, enterprise is over 10K employees.
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@eddiejennings said in Feedback on Resume:
This thread has encouraged me to change my title to IT Generalist on Linkedin rather than keep my company-provided title of Network Administrator.
It's not really a good title to use. It's a good description, and it is what all SMB IT people really do. But I would not use it on a resume directly.
