far stronger impression if you overdress than not.
What should candidates keep in mind during job interviews, whether they're interviewing for a CIO position or to work for a CIO?
For someone interviewing with a CIO or to be a CIO, you should talk about what you've accomplished, how you work in complex organizations, what teams you have been a member of and how that team's success has been enjoyed by others. You might want to give examples of your leadership on a team and what you have done for your customers. I want to know what teams you've been on, what you've contributed, and you have to be dead honest.
I think one of the dumbest questions in an interview is, Tell me about your failures. Nobody likes to talk about their failures. There are very few individual successes and very few individual failures. If the interviewer focuses completely on these, it is not a realistic discussion to have.
Do you have any pet peeves during an interview?
People who think they are the most important thing to come down the pike and who can't imagine in their wildest dreams why you wouldn't hire them on the spot. I've interviewed those people and, frankly, their attitude tells me they don't understand the complexity of the world in which we work and that's unfortunate. And, by the way, turn your BlackBerry or phone off before you come into the room.
What advice can you offer candidates about their résumés, thank-you notes and cover letters?
Thank you notes are almost a lost art, but I continue to be impressed with people who write a follow up thank-you note emphasizing their fit with the position. What I find most difficult is when someone shows up for an interview and says that they don't know much about M.D. Anderson and asks me to tell them about it. That's something they could have learned had they checked our website and done their homework.
If someone is a quality candidate, would they have a better shot contacting you directly or should they go through human resources?
Our human resources department probably processes 3,000 to 4,000 successful candidates a year. We have an employee base of approximately 17,000, so there are a lot of résumés that flow in either electronically or on paper. It is probably true that sending a note directly to the CIO with a résumé at least gets some attention. If I receive a letter or résumé and it looks like somebody who might be of interest to one of my directors, I will send the résumé to the director and let them handle it. I will also send it to the human resources department.
As a state agency, we do have a fairly formal hiring process, and we have to be sure that we comply with all of the relevant hiring regulations and EEOC requirements, so everybody has to go through human resources at the end of the day. I do get some résumés by e-mail that I do discard because the e-mail is poorly written or the résumé has nothing to do with anything we do. One of the lessons that people need to learn is networking, so when someone is recommended to me from somebody I know, I certainly pay more attention to that than a blind letter. Networking really does work.
What three interview questions do you always ask and why?
I want to know what you've accomplished and how you've accomplished it. That tells me whether you think you're the only guy who's actually done it or whether you were part of a team.
The other question I typically ask is, What do you see yourself doing in three to four years down the road? One of the things that I'm interested in is whether this particular opportunity fits into your career path, and I want to know that you've thought about your career. If your response is that you
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