AI is impacting hiring practices, especially in the Tech space. Here’s a great conversation Alex Jarett had with Richard Doran, President of Sierra ITS on this exact topic.

As Richard puts it - there is a lot of noise related to AI in the workplace now, and it’s going to BOTH help growth AND create job elimination. “What companies and hiring managers need to do is challenge their outdated assumptions on hiring and what talent looks like in an AI-driven work environment.”

Richard Goes on to say there are three key skills that savvy hiring executives look for in employees:

1. Problem Solving;

2. Adaptability;

3. Being Collaborative.

Tech skills are a given. These are the types of skills that will elevate new hires.

Companies are preparing for growth - Richard shares a story where an executive states that their company goal for a key area is to optimize the business process with the use of AI. In one area of the business, they have 300 employees performing a process in a very inefficient manner and they know it. They are preparing the company for growth, says the executive, by cleaning up their business processes while adding AI to the process.

Changing the hiring process can be a challenge, and Richard and his team recognize this trend. You have to do a lot of due diligence to determine what makes a successful hire both now and in the future AI-driven world.

In anticipation of the shift, Richard and his team offer a 5-point program that they can use to help the client drive the change needed in their hiring process, and would be happy to discuss this with hiring managers who would like to learn more.

Learn more about Richard here: https://www.technologyexecutivesclub.com/advisory-board-Richard-Doran

Happy to present our latest Spotlight Interview between Alex Jarett and Tory Bjorklund, CEO and Cofounder of Victoria Fide Consulting.

Tory and his team are experts in both fixing broken Technology projects and also providing the leadership to assure that your next major project goes smoothly.

The name “Victoria Fide” is Latin for “Success Assurance.” And Tory and his team are on a mission to help companies avoid having a failing project. But the reality is 70-80% of significant technology projects fail, and Tory and his team are there to help you get your project back on track.

Example project types include, ERP, Digital Transformation, CRM, Manufacturing Execution Systems, Warehouse management systems, etc.  These are the big projects.

In this Spotlight Interview Tory shared two great stories:

* A COO from a mid-sized manufacturing company asked Tory and their team to help reimplement their ERP system because they became significantly less efficient after implementing the ERP on their own. It turned out that all of the real processes were being done off the ERP. Their entire production planning was being done in spreadsheets - AFTER the ERP was implemented, so they helped the company fix this.

* In the second example, Tory shared how that COO went on to a new, different company and called Tory and his team to help them implement their ERP the right way the first time!

Have a troubled project and want to know if Tory and his team can help? Tory and his team have created a series of complementary assessments and diagnostics that you can use in a self-service fashion on their website at https://victoriafide.com/. One example is a “Root Cause Assessment” for a troubled project.

Thanks to Tory for spending time with Alex Jarett and providing an excellent Spotlight Interview!

Here's the first ten minutes of our June 2025 Peer Advisory Group internal discussion on Executive Presence.

Each month our Peer Advisory Group of Technology Leaders discusses a new topic that helps them in their role as Technology Leaders.

In this segment, we discussed:

* How to gracefully move the Board Meetings forward when board members want to go deep into the technology.

* How AI is coming up in every board meetings and how to approach that part of the discussion.

* An effective approach for board meetings.

* Setting up an AI Program Committee

Special thanks to: Len Servedio, Tim Walter and Praveen Kamsetti for their comments and advice during this segment.

We present the first ten minutes here to give you a few great insights and a behind the scenes view of what's it's like to be part of our peer group! Interested in getting involved? Book a Discovery Call on our site at www.technologyexecutivesclub.com.

Join us behind the scenes from our recent Peer Advisory meeting roundtable. In this Roundtable discussion a few of our Peer Advisory members and Alex Jarett discussed, Best Tips, Insights, Challenges and more from a Technology Leadership standpoint in leveraging and managing SAAS applications. Some of the topics discussed were: * Best Tips, including how to negotiate a better deal. * Usage and Pricing Models / Investment and Cost Savings * Vendor Management and Tracking Consumption and charges * Security Compliance and Data Security * Training and Adoption As you can see it was a great discussion! Special thanks to the following executives for being active in the Roundtable Discussion: * Tom Irvine, Director of IT at Monosol * David Williamson, a life Sciences Technology Leader and CIO at Abzenza. * Allan Dattel, VP of IT at Alliance for Audited Media

Join us for a Spotlight Interview with Stan Hammond!

Stan is a Global C-Level AI & Business Technology Advisor at ServiceNow who leverages his experiences as a past Global CIO and CISO at companies such as Pfizer and GKN Aerospace (to name a few) to help clients:

a. Accomplish Big Wins;

b. Leverage AI for real business gains today;

c. Fulfill and Exceed Cybersecurity Requirements throughout the enterprise.

In this Spotlight interview you'll learn:

a. Stan's story and why shifting to an individual contributor from a global CIO was a great career and personal decision;

b. How he helps clients go for big wins and why;

c. The best way to think of AI and integrate it to augment the team, NOT to replace them. And more!

Great interview and we are confident you'll enjoy it!

We are pleased to present our newest Spotlight Interview with Robert Gonzalez, who is VP of Engineering at SugarCRM. Sugar CRM is a very popular CRM that is known for their product, their strong customer community, and partnership ecosystem.

As you’ll learn from this interview, Robert’s passion and expertise is in the areas of :

* Building customer-centric products that deliver measurable value at scale;

* Leading by cultivating high-trust cultures where people grow, the teams thrive and build ideas that turn into break-through solutions.

Robert shared some key insights and a story for each of these areas, and also ended the interview with some inspiration for others who are looking to make jumps in their own careers

. Be sure to listen to learn his insights and that inspiration. It was a great interview. We think you’ll enjoy it. Thank you to Robert for taking the time to share with our community!

We are pleased to present our latest Spotlight Interview with Phil Smith, CEO of Fractional Executive Advisors. Phil has a very successful career performing successful operational and management roles at a variety of companies and industries, including CEO, CIO, COO and even CMO, to name a few, so it’s only natural that he launch Fractional Executive Advisors as a way to give small and medium sized companies the expertise that they need at a fraction of the cost. In this interview we discussed: * The types of roles that Phil has helped clients with; * The industries, including Technology, that Phil is typically involved in; * 3 example case studies of companies Phil has recently helped including: - A hosting company that wanted to expand and he helped them moved into an adjacent space providing complimentary Cybersecurity services; - A family own business where the owner was ready to retire and none of the children wanted to take over. In this case Phil was able to act as CEO and then help them sell the business; - A seasonable remodeling company that built an related home improvement and maintenance service adjacent to their main service as a way of smoothing their revenue streams. * The types of scenarios where companies typically will bring in an executive like Phil and when to reach out to him for help! It’s a great interview, packed with great, seasoned business advice, and we think you’ll enjoy it. Thanks to Phil for the great interview!

Praveen Kamsetti Supply Chain Optimization Leadership Session

In this timely discussion, Praveen Kamsetti discusses the opportunity for companies to revisit their supply chain and leverage the new technologies to optimize their supply chains.

This discussion was in part inspired from a popular article Praveen wrote on LinkedIn. It’s a timely discussion, and Praveen discussed:

* The importance of having your data mature enough to driven the intelligence on top of it;

* The traceability of data; * How to use technologies such as RPA to cost optimize the supply chain.

* The potential for cost savings using the cloud; We also touched on:

* Advanced Analytics on the different types of data: internal data, external data and real time data; * Inventory Management

* Route Optimization And key technologies we discussed included: AI, Blockchain, and MORE.

Be sure to watch or listen now.

Here's a link to read Praveen's article on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/supply-chain-optimization-technology-driven-praveen-kamsetti-tfc0c/?trackingId=gVqXA6sYkW%2BhwE6sTtj6eA%3D%3D Here’s a link also to learn more about

Praveen on our site: https://www.technologyexecutivesclub.com/advisory-board-Praveen-Kamsetti

We are pleased to share Alex's Spotlight interview with John Szeder, a world class software engineer in both the gaming and enterprise space, and newest Board of Advisor member! John is an expert in advanced systems such as revenue optimization for gaming and corporate clients. As he states, he likes to help people who are solving big problems that impact millions of users. John specializes in building and elite engineering teams providing high value to company goals, and has done so for clients such as Zynga and Clorox - both of which serve millions of users. In our interview we discussed: * How applications such as revenue optimization work in systems that affect millions of users; * The keys to rapidly building elite engineering teams; * How to make sure you retain these team members; * The importance of building systems that serve the business goals and objectives. * And more! Congrats to John on a great interview! We hope you enjoy it!

We are pleased to share our Spotlight Interview with Richard Doran, Founder and CEO of Sierra ITS. Richard and his team solve business problems through talent solutions.

These solutions include: Contract, Direct Hire and Executive search. It’s a growing company that Richard founded 25 years ago! They focus on both growing companies and associations. It was a great discussion and one of the strengths of Richard and his team is that 92% of the people they have provided to their clients for Direct Hire are with their clients over 5 years!

They also do contract work to get those “sharpshooters” for your critical hires. It starts with Richard and his team taking a deep dive with his clients on what their strategies and needs are, then they take the time needed to understand all the parties involved to make sure there is a good fit.

Here’s some of the topics we discussed were:

* The founding of the company and the focus today;

* Their unique approach to both Direct Hire and and Contract.

* The reason they take time up front to understand the needs of both the client and the potential hires before they present a candidate to the client.

* Their growth is with both growing companies and associations.

* While they can help in many areas, the areas that they tend to play in are ERP, Project Management, Networking and Technical Support spaces. That’s where they see the highest demand currently. Richard has a significant amount of data related to the different types of projects and talent that is available. He often shares this up front when potential clients are developing their hiring plans.

Feel free to reach out to Richard. Congrats to Richard for a successful interview!