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The Hiring Manager Interviews: AIG American General CIO Jeff Carlson Advises Candidates to Study Hard and Ask Smart Questions

Conversations with IT managers on how they hire the best.

By Jane Howze

May 15, 2007 — CIO — Jeff Carlson is senior vice president and CIO of AIG American General—the marketing name for the domestic life insurance companies and affiliates of AIG. In this role, Carlson leads a 400-person IT department and is responsible for business process outsourcing, strategic projects, and AIG American General's Center for Innovation in addition to IT. He has worked for AIG since 1995 when he was hired as vice president of application development. Carlson was named CIO in 2002 after holding various IT management positions within the company and was made a senior vice president earlier this year. He spoke with executive recruiter Jane Howze about his hiring practices.

Jane Howze: When you first started hiring employees, did you receive any training?

Jeff Carlson: I was very fortunate to have begun my career with KPMG, which had structured training and placed high importance on the ability to assess candidates and evaluate technical skills and personal characteristics. We also participated in a number of mock interviews that provided great preparation for getting comfortable with the hiring process.

What positions do you specifically hire for at AIG American General?

I spend much of my hiring time interviewing candidates for senior positions throughout the company that are not IT specific. Our chief executive officer, Matt Winter, encourages an atmosphere where we collaborate outside of traditional functions so that we get involved in each other's businesses, so to speak. I get involved in any kind of officer-level recruiting that we do, particularly in the financial area, which I have some background in—whether it be a planning position or CFO type of job—because of his desire to get different perspectives on candidates across the traditional functional lines.

We [in IT] also try to ensure that we get as many perspectives as possible, so we invite people outside of IT to participate in our recruiting of technical folks. For example, if we were looking for someone to lead the applications group that supports our financial systems, we would want to make sure that a candidate for that position interviews with the controller and perhaps the chief actuary. Similarly, if we are interviewing someone in the area of product development, we would have one of the product managers be a part of the interview process.

I have a pretty experienced IT team, so they only get me involved when there are some differing opinions about a candidate, or when we're looking to fill a new role that may require different skills or characteristics. As far as the last interview I did for an IT position, I recall two: one for an architectural position; the other for the business analyst function.

 

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