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Ask John
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John Henning is Director of Business Development for Granite Solutions Groupe, a leading financial services and technology recruitment firm. John brings over two decades of management experience in the technology and financial services industry to the firm and oversees all client relations, strategic business development, marketing, and technology initiatives. Previously, John was Chief Information Officer at Group One Trading, where he implemented trading applications and global infrastructure projects. John also spent 7 years in various management positions at investment management firm Barclays Global Investors, where he developed strong relationships in the financial services sector. Prior to that, John held senior technology management positions at The Walt Disney Company and Health Net in Southern California, where he employed his expertise in infrastructure architecture, data center management, and systems administration. Throughout his career, John has brought a blend of technical expertise and a strong customer service skills to the organizations in which he served. John holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Management from Golden Gate University in San Francisco.
Granite Solutions Groupe's client focus is on the Financial Services and high-tech industries. We have two practices: (1) A High-End Consulting and Professional Services practice where we place contractors and consultants as well as various IT professionals with specific industry domain expertise; and (2) an Executive Search practice where we place full-time, direct-hire candidates in senior level professional and managerial roles on a either a retained or contingent basis.
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Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Career Planning Series: Managing your career trajectory
Now that the dog days of summer have come and gone, we can all look forward to getting back into the swing of things and putting our noses to the grind stone, whether it’s back to work, back to school or back to both! And as we begin a new cycle of productivity after a nice Labor Day break, it’s a perfect time to visit the issue of managing your career trajectory. As a recruiter, I often look at career trajectory as a measure of a candidate’s level of sophistication and ability to manage their careers. This is particularly valuable to me when ascertaining the maturity level of more senior candidates, with 10-15 years of experience. As a candidate it’s advantageous to acknowledge this perspective on your career early on, so that as you reach greater levels of experience you know you’ve had some conscious influence over the trajectory itself. What I’m looking for when evaluating a candidate’s career trajectory are consistent patterns of evolution in the candidate’s career. To illustrate, if I was recruiting for a managerial role, depending on the level of the position I might look for a career trajectory that looks something like the following: - Individual Contributor role – performing specialized tasks as part of a larger team with some degree of individual discretion and control.
- Team Lead or Supervisor - performance management, resource planning, limited hiring authority and project involvement.
- Manager or Department Head - managing supervisors or team leads, performance management, financial budget management, hiring authority, departmental goal setting, project management and decision-making.
- Director or VP – decision-making, hiring authority, financial budget management, managing middle managers, setting strategic direction, company policy creation, senior management interface and managing external vendors and partners.
- SVP, EVP and C-Level – corporate strategy, executive leadership, fiscal decision-making, product focus, relationship management, public speaking, board involvement, guiding and coaching more junior management staff and corporate policy setting.
While this example may be the ideal, the reality of today’s employment market often reveals a less traditional candidate pool where candidates have left large companies, joined startups, gone back to mid-size companies and sometimes started their own businesses. This forces me as a recruiter to focus more on the content of a person’s work experience and less on the formal titles, but there is definitely a need to be aware of both. Again, what I’m really looking for in candidates is a consistent pattern of growth in responsibility, domain knowledge and exposure to a diverse set of challenges and situations that makes them more of an expert in their particular field or industry, whether they’re a manager, technician or analyst.
posted by Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley @ 1:31 PM
3 Comments:
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Hi John,
Thanks for sharing your insights on career planning. Would love to read the upcoming topics also.
I am CMU westcoast alumni working currently in Bangalore, India.
Have a question at this point. I have been working as a quality management professional for about 3 yrs now. My role in the project is mainly to assist the teams with quality management consultation and process improvement all through the project release cycle. I want to gain more experience as a quality management practioner before i take up full fledged consultation... Do let me know what you think and how are the opportunities in this field.
Thanks,
Bharathi
Hi Bharati - My perspective on Quality Management from a career development perspective is that only the largest of companies can afford to invest in a comprehensive QM program. Many small and medium-sized organizations of course invest in software QA, testing methodologies, test-driven development and automation but TQM from the ground up is more often found in the manufacturing and large enterprise software environments. Feel free to email me at johnhenning@granitesolutionsgroupe.com if you'd like me to take a look at your resume and give you a more specific evaluation of your marketability in this space.
Cheers!
John
Thanks. I found your points very interesting. I think it might be time to clean up the resume to improve upon the points you mentioned that you are looking for when recruiting.