Technology is ever-changing, and it’s important for every business to keep up with new gadgets and trends. That’s why many businesses look to their chief technology officers for guidance on creating a tech strategy that serves their company.
When hiring a CTO for your business, you’ll want to look for someone with the right knowledge and experience to get the job done. We asked a panel of Forbes Technology Council members what questions you should ask when interviewing candidates. Their best answers are below.
1. What Business Opportunities Do You See As A Result Of Changing Technology?
While technology and IT demands are moving at a faster pace, I see the real differentiator for CTOs being the ability to understand new business opportunities that are available because of changes in the technology landscape. Things like blockchain create new potential solutions, but it is irrelevant if that does not create an avenue to provide value to your customer. - Patrick Emmons, DragonSpears, Inc.
2. What's Your Favorite News Source?
When interviewing candidates for any technical position, I drill them on their sources of information and updates. I’ll ask them to explain the last interesting article they read to understand the effort they put into maintaining knowledge relevance. - Randy Watkins, Critical Start
3. How Would You Define Your Leadership Style?
This is the one practical knowledge and experience question to ask because technology changes rapidly. Any good CTO will have the existing skills and talents and understands how to invest in themselves, but can they move a team to do tasks which they have never done before? Technology changes, yet leadership passes through the ages. - Jamie Gianna, Partners Behavioral Health Management
4. What New Technologies Have You Learned Over Your Career?
Technology changes too quickly to expect someone to know everything. The latest and greatest tech isn’t always the best. Finding someone with experience using different tech over time shows what you need in a CTO: a person who can learn quickly to solve problems with the proper application of technology. - Tim Maliyil, AlertBoot
5. How Much Time Do You Spend On Professional Development?
I would want to know what was the latest book read and how much quiet time they think is required during the week. Good CTOs will always consider themselves students and value silence to plan and prepare their next moves. - Elaine Montilla, CUNY Graduate Center
6. How Would You Apply Technology To Our Business Problems?
Technology is only a means to an end. That end is the practical, real application of technology to solve burning problems that can positively impact revenue generation and productivity or reduce costs. A good CTO knows technology. A great CTO sees beyond it to impact the business in a meaningful way. Without this perspective, technology is effectively useless. - Abe Ankumah, Nyansa
7. What New Technologies Do You Think We Should Be Using?
I would ask a potential new CTO for their thoughts on new technologies as well as how they would go about switching to new technology when there is a large migration cost. An example of this is when updating tech stack from Java to Node. When you are replacing something that is not broken, how do you negotiate the upfront trade-off costs with newer platforms? - Ryan Chan, UpKeep Maintenance Management
8. What Was Your Last Technological Failure?
I always ask this question to a CTO candidate. If the candidate doesn't admit to a failure, they're probably afraid to fail or they're not pushing the envelope enough. A CTO must be adventurous and a continuous learner. CTOs must look for the next technological advancement to create greater value, reduce time to market or increase profits for the business. - David Torres, Feedme Inc
9. What Do You Do When You're Not Working?
A key quality in a CTO is intellectual curiosity across technology, business and transformations. I often ask this question and the answers reveal a lot. Maybe ask tangential questions on recent events. What is your view on global warming? What do you think about Google's announcement of achieving quantum supremacy? Whats a stock tip you would recommend? - Himanshu Palsule, Epicor Software Corporation
10. How Do You Interact With Product Management?
Everyone in CTO positions should be able to step outside their own technical domains and take the "voice” of the customer as input into their direction setting and decision making. Having positive stories about partnering with product management, customer success, sales and others representing customer, channel or market inputs should be a prerequisite to moving forward with CTO candidates. - Steve Pao, Hillwork, LLC
11. How Strong Are Your People Skills?
The CTO is the backbone of any organization and it is even more critical if you are building a product or tool. While being a great technically-skilled candidate is important, it is also very important to have someone who has good people skills. In my personal experience, it worked great when we hired a CTO candidate with blend of these two skills. Our CTO drives innovation. - Srinivas Arasada, Evolutyz Corp
12. How Would You Design And Build A Smart House?
By asking candidates how they would go about constructing a new smart house given land and a sizable budget, you will learn their approach to design and architecture. Look for their attention to detail and their ability to draw out additional information and requirements through questioning. What innovations or trends they will leverage? What components (security, user experience, etc.) are relevant to them? - Phil Alberta, IPM
