Labour statistics show a promising job outlook for information and technology officers, with a projected growth of 16% over the coming decade. Crafting a high-quality professional resume for this job target will be one of the most challenging parts of your CIO job search.
If you’re applying to become a company’s new chief information officer (CIO), you might wonder how you distil your years or decades of experience into a CIO resume that stands out from competitors.
What does a job-winning CIO resume look like? We’ll be discussing that in fine detail shortly.
Making A Great First Impression With Your Chief Information Officer Resume.
The best resumes are the ones that tell the story of your career. These contain the same basic information as other resumes, but they present it in a way that shows the hiring manager your core capabilities and vividly highlights the accomplishments of your career.
After you sort through the job postings, find the story you want to tell, then use your CIO resume to tell that story.
Hiring managers may look for your technical skills first, but adding colour to them will enhance your resume greatly.
Your chief information officer resume doesn’t need to be an all-encompassing summary of your career. If done correctly, it’s the ticket that will get you through the door for a job interview.
A good CIO resume should include details of:
- Project management expertise.
- Your business analyst resources.
- Your record of stellar service delivery.
- Your examples of process redesign.
- Evidence of how you have developed high-performing leaders.
Selling yourself in written form is hard and doesn’t come naturally to everyone; many leaders in business are more confident at speaking and would rather skip ahead to the interview, which is why so many hire resume builders and use resume templates.
Select The Best CIO Resume Format And Template.
Good CIO resumes all have one thing in common: although they are information-dense, the information contained is readable for both hiring managers and applicant tracking systems.
That’s why it’s important to avoid creative formatting. Most potential employers don’t have the patience to decipher unreadable fonts and strange line breaks.
Look at other people’s CIO resumes before you get started building your own. Take note of the elements they have in common as well as the things you particularly like about them.
(Related: Is An Executive Resume Writer Worth It?)
For instance, bullet points are an excellent way of drawing attention to your top qualifications.
You don’t want your CIO resume template to blend in with the hundreds of others in the pile, but you also don’t want to draw negative attention to yourself.
Our professional resume builders at Arielle Executive are exceptionally skilled at this. Be sure to reach out to us if you need any assistance.
Summary And Core Strengths.
Your executive resume should begin with a basic summary of your personal information. The headline should describe the skills that make you suited to be a chief information officer.
Your contact information should be up-to-date and easy to find. Make sure to include:
- Your professional email address.
- Your telephone number.
- Your full address, including city and state.
- Your LinkedIn profile URL.
Stuck? Browse these resume examples to get unstuck.
If you’re in the process of creating a CIO resume, you surely have years of experience under your belt, so it’s also important to add a short executive summary to entice hiring managers.
Although your resume summary should appear at the top of the document, it’s a good idea to write it after you’ve put everything else together.
This provides you with a high-level view of your skills as the hiring manager will see them.
Key Skills And Training.
Next, include a summary of your relevant skills and abilities. This section of your CIO resume should be made up of bullet points; though short, punchy sentences are fine, too.
Combine hard and soft skills: include things like “implementing roadmap priorities,” and also “team-building and leadership skills.”
In this section of your CIO resume, highlight your skills in:
- Business intelligence.
- General and specialised computer systems.
- Managing projects.
- Business analysis.
If you’re skilled in precision communication or something else that’s difficult to quantify, include that in your cover letter as well.
Professional Experience, Project Management, And Technical Skills.
Your professional experience is the cornerstone of your CIO resume. List your prior employers in reverse chronological order, and make your job titles, company names, and dates of employment prominent and visible.
Each listing in this section should be both precise and concise. If you have a story to tell about how you used your management skills to salvage a critical project that went wrong, your resume probably isn’t the right place to tell it.
Include that story in your cover letter, or discuss this at your CIO job interview instead.
Focus this section on your achievements and your responsibilities. Get to the point. Fast.
To stimulate, ask yourself the following questions:
- What business objectives did I have at each position?
- How did I achieve business goals across a project lifecycle?
- How did my achievements tie in with the company’s business strategy?
- Did I direct high-performing teams to spearhead business growth?
- Was I involved in establishing an application delivery roadmap and deadlines?
Don’t make vague claims like “Achieved substantial cost savings for the company.”
Using specifics and concrete numbers, where possible, is far more likely to get you an interview: “Slashed annual costs by 20%.”
Education History.
Your CIO resume education section should be salient and to the point. List your degree subject, the name of the institution, and the dates you studied there.
If you scored a 2:1 or first class honours, highlight that too. If you are still studying and have yet to receive your grades, include the date you plan to complete your studies.
It’s also a good idea to include other certifications as well. Did you graduate magna cum laude? Have you won awards in your IT department? What technological certifications do you have?
Tailor Your Resume And Goals To The Job Description.
For the best results, customise your resume for each individual job posting.
What does the job listing tell you about the person the company wants to hire? What has your research on the company told you about its business needs, goals, challenges, and priorities?
The better you can position yourself as the solution to a company’s problems, the more likely you will land an interview.
With each new application, tailor your story so that your CIO resume aligns with each company’s respective values.
C-Suite Resume Examples.
The Arielle Executive team has developed guides resume writing guides for every job in the c-suite:
How To Write A Chief Marketing Officer Resume
How To Write A Chief Financial Officer Resume
How To Write A Chief Executive Officer Resume
How To Write A Chief Operating Officer Resume
Look At A CIO Resume Sample.
Often the best way to learn is through benchmarking success, so look at this CIO resume example.
While your own experience and goals will differ, a resume template can help you get started with the basic outline of what to include.
Note: for brevity’s sake, this CIO resume example will only list one prior employer.
Headline And Contact Information.
CIO | 15 Years Of Automotive Industry Experience | Expert In Managing Cross-Functional Teams | Business And Technology Partnership.
- James Nguyen
- Brisbane, Qld
- 0491 571 491
- jnguyen@example.com
- LinkedIn URL
Summary.
“Strategic chief information officer who has overseen large teams of project managers in creating ambitious project deliverables. Six years of continuing education regarding information technology in a scaled agile framework. Close-knit experience with the company’s core management team, with an interest in strategic planning.”
Key Skills And Training.
- Executive team leadership and training.
- Business and technology partnership.
- Cybersecurity.
- Quality assurance.
- Risk analysis and disaster recovery.
- Leadership and development.
- Technological and regulatory compliance.
- Budget management and optimisation.
Employment History.
Chief Information Officer | LuxCar, Brisbane, Qld | 2007-2023
“Led a team of IT staff with operations in eight countries. Partnered with enterprise technology providers, software companies, and consulting firms. Implemented innovative strategies to support the organisation’s international expansion.”
- Consolidated six aging legacy systems into cloud operations, achieving a 60% reduction in the time it takes to bring a new product to market.
- Collaborated with other C-suite executives to drive substantial cost savings and provide exceptional oversight of new projects.
- Organised the transition of 350 staff members to fully remote operations using video conferencing, cloud storage and sync, and unified endpoint management.
- Maintained seamless business continuity during the transition to remote operations.
- Utilised end-to-end execution to streamline a top-down approach to address changes to the company’s plans.
- Enhanced system security and risk mitigation by implementing multi-factor authentication and enforcing VPN use for all employees.
Education And Leadership.
Master of Business Administration (MBA) | Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne | Melbourne, Vic | 2006
Bachelor of Computer Science (BCS) | University of Queensland | Brisbane, Qld | 2002
Board Member | Queensland for Kids | Brisbane, Qld
The Final Step: Double-Check Your CIO Resume.
Once you’ve consulted the CIO resume example and completed your resume, it’s not enough to look it over yourself. Have another person proofread it, then run your resume and cover letter through an applicant tracking system simulator.
If you neglect this step, you may find your applications ignored, even though you have every one of the CIO skills required for the job.
Building an effective CIO resume is never a one-and-done process. If you would like to consult with our professional CIO resume writers, reach out to us at Arielle Executive.
