At bottom, some quick points on how to sell me to a higher-up. At times like these I wish there was a Microsoft certification for snappy verbs, or a Good Housekeeping seal for search engine success.
First time I saw an innovative twist on Chief ______ Officer was at iXL, the national Web development company that listed a Chief People Officer in its org chart. I thought that was the coolest thing ever, and it's stayed in my mind ever since.
Answering Chief Better Officer probably sounded snarky, but it certainly wasn't meant that way. It's just this dream concept of essentially being an in-house consultant with one goal -- quality -- and no budgeting, no authority, no other focus but how can we all make this better.
It's a dream title because in real-life multi-departmental people like myself wind up being the IT/Marketing equivalent of a baseball utility infielder.
If there's one thing I've learned in consulting, it's the difficulty of leading from the bottom, and it would be nice to move up the food chain a bit. I know how to manage and I know how to lead, but having very little of that formally listed on a resume, it's a constant case of trying to prove myself and work my way up. Like now.
Hire me for the opening you have now, and I might just be able to help you on that next opening in the future.
1 If I had just one quick chance at a first impression, I'd start by saying I don't miss deadlines. Period.
2 Tell your boss that you believe in the talent-to-ego ratio, and that I know how to be very good at what I do without being an ass about it.
3 On external Web projects, I make people money. On internal projects, I save people money. I once eliminated a million (literally) sheets of printed paper with an online move.
4 On external projects, you have to know how to work in search engine necessities without distracting from the message
5 On an intranet, the better job you can do of presenting what's needed, the less pixel-space needed for navigation. Every pixel is precious.