Illumina's new CIO Norm Fjeldheim spent 28 years at at Qualcomm, 17 as their CIO, which became an issue when he started looking for a new CIO job.

The latest subject in our “How I Landed My New CIO Job” series is Norm Fjeldheim, who started his current CIO position at Illumina in January 2016. Fjeldheim had spent the previous 28 years at the semiconductor maker, Qualcomm, the last 17 years as their CIO.

Heller Search: Were you actively looking for a new CIO role?

Norm Fjeldheim: Yes. My previous company, Qualcomm, where I had spent 28 years, was moving in a different direction with IT than I felt comfortable with, personally, and professionally. I wasn’t convinced I could be successful in the long run.

On the advice of a number of my peers, I started my search.

After 28 years at one company, how did you get your job search started?

I let people know I was interested in pursuing a new job opportunity, I connected with recruiters, I established my LinkedIn presence, and created the first resume I’d had in over a decade. I just made the commitment to myself to start the process, and see it through.

At first it was a little intimidating, but ultimately it turned out to be a lot of fun.

What were you looking for in your next leadership role?

I was looking for a high growth company, a strong culture, an interesting challenge where they either had a broken IT organization that needed fixing, or one that needed to be taken to the next level.

I like to learn, and challenge myself, so for me, changing industries was an objective, and an exciting prospect. I fully expected to leave San Diego to find the right opportunity, so I considered opportunities across the United States, and even internationally. Some were much larger organizations than Qualcomm, while others were smaller. The size of the organization mattered less to me than the challenge and the company culture. I had a number of interviews, and even a few CIO/CTO jobs for which I was a finalist.

All the opportunities were outside the tech industry, which I didn’t expect to happen, but I was pleased that it worked out that way.

How was your experience working with executive recruiters?

There were definitely differences to how each of the recruiters I worked with approached me, and the search. Some were much more focused on position they were trying to fill, and stayed mainly focused on my skills and would I be a match for the position they were recruiting for, while others were more interested in who I was as a person, and what my long term goals were for my career and my life, and then worked to find positions that were a match for me.

All of the recruiters I worked with were very professional, and both styles were effective in finding interesting opportunities for me to pursue.

How did you hear about the CIO opportunity at Illumina?

You often hear that it’s your network that lands you your next job, and that turned out to be the case for me. It wasn’t a recruiter that led me to Illumina. Illumina’s CEO, Jay Flatley, lived in my neighborhood. He and I had been talking about their CIO search on and off for several years.  The CIO role at Illumina was a much smaller role at the time, so it didn’t seem to be the right fit, and I was happy at Qualcomm. I’d referred other people to Illumina over the years, and they had interviewed a number of candidates for their CIO position, but had never made an offer.

One day last summer while I was at the gym, I was working out next to Jay, and we started talking about my job search. I knew that Illumina still had an active CIO search going, but hadn’t asked Jay about it previously as I thought they had already filled the position, and it still didn’t seem to be the right fit for me.

But Jay told me that day in the gym that was not the case at all. The reality was that they did not even have a finalist and they were still looking. But I left it at that, and didn’t pursue it further at the time.

A couple nights later I told my wife about my conversation with Jay while we were having dinner. She made me walk over to Jay’s house right then and there, and told me not to come back home until I had spoken with him.

Fortunately for me, Jay was actually home and I had the opportunity to discuss the position with him further. This time, something clicked, and let him know I would be interested in Illumina’s CIO position. He said “Great,” and he connected me with the person who I would end up reporting to. It still took over two months for the process to even get going because after 28 years at Qualcomm, other folks at Illumina still didn’t think I was serious about leaving.

Did you come up against that regularly in your job search?

My long tenure at Qualcomm turned out to be quite a negative. Everyone I talked to seemed be asking themselves, “Is this guy serious? Is he really going to leave Qualcomm after all these years? Would he really leave San Diego, arguably one of the best places to live in the country?”

What piqued your interest in the CIO opportunity at Illumina?

First, what the company does is simply amazing. Illumina is literally changing the world by changing the face of healthcare. Illumina’s work has a phenomenal impact on people’s lives. For example, one of our new subsidiaries is working to create a blood test that could potentially detect many forms of cancer while they’re still in stage 1 or stage 2.

What was it about your professional background that was attractive to Illumina?

There was a “been there done that” factor with regard to managing through growth. Qualcomm had just 92 people when I first joined the company, and it grew to 12,000, then half the company was sold off, then we grew again to nearly 30,000. Illumina is poised for continued growth, so the fact that I had experienced those sorts of challenges was appealing to them, I believe.

They liked my focus on mentoring people and that I had built strong teams at Qualcomm. Qualcomm IT was a place where people wanted to work and build their career. Qualcomm was named one of the best places to work in IT 10 years in a row by ComputerWorld.

My experience in Cybersecurity was another factor I believe. They liked that I had had a lot of experience protecting Qualcomm’s intellectual property from advanced attacks from nation state attackers. Illumina is becoming a much more global company, and is operating in areas of the world where cybersecurity threats are significant.

Once I started interviewing, I think they also saw a strong personality and cultural fit. I know I did. The culture here is terrific, and I really enjoy the people. The passion around the mission of the company goes all the way on up to the board. You feel it. The values of the company and the culture match very well with my personal value system, and I think we both saw that as we got to know one another.

Was Illumina looking for a traditional CIO?

They were at first, but that changed while I was interviewing for the role.

I have responsibility for IT but I also picked up what we call the Global Transformation Office, which encompasses processes and process improvement for the entire company, and I also have responsibility for Global Facilities. Since I started out in the construction industry, that has turned out to be a natural fit for me.

Illumina wasn’t considering expanding the role initially, but since I had run functions outside of traditional IT before, including customer service, indirect purchasing, and product lifecycle management, Illumina saw an opportunity to give me more responsibility.

How did you approach your job interviews?

I have good relationships at the big consulting firms, and my contacts there were helpful by giving me their takes on each company I was interviewing with. Some, but not all recruiters would did pre-interviews with me, providing detailed background information and the key questions I need to be prepared to answer.

The discussions I had with recruiters as I reached out to establish contact with them and interest them in my background turned out to interview trial runs. I did a ton of them and they were great practice. As I did more of them, I got more and more comfortable with the interview process.  

To me the entire process was fun. I enjoyed meeting so many people and I learned a lot. Some companies had an excellent, well-designed interview process. Some even had a psychological evaluation process or a psychologist from an outside firm or on staff to assess personality fit with the existing leadership team. I got the chance to talk to various board members and to get their perspective on their companies and markets, which was very enlightening.

Who do you report to at Illumina?

Marc Stapley, Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer, but the entire leadership team thinks I work for them, which is the way it should be.

How did you prepare to start your new role?

I had the benefit of meeting with several of my to-be direct reports before I even started at Illumina. They provided me with a lot of background information, and things like org charts and strategic plans to help me get up to speed. I had a lot of e-mail communication with them before my start date, and also with HR, so the learning process was well underway before I even stepped in the door.

From there, I tried to stay open with everyone. “Here is what I know, this is my experience, and here is what I need to learn.”

Did you find any crises upon arriving that needed to be dealt with right away?

Nothing too serious. The company had implemented SAP last summer and the stabilization period was taking longer than expected, so I had to get involved with the stabilization and get the ticket backlog cleaned up. It’s a strong organization that has been supporting hyper growth for a number of years. It’s more about helping continue that growth.

Are there organizational changes in store?

We didn’t have much of an enterprise architecture function, and I think that that is important to have. It was identified as an unfilled need on some of the org charts I saw before I arrived. The IT organization had been structured to support the big SAP implementation, so I will likely shift to a structure more aligned to the business.

How do you know when your IT organization is succeeding?

My number one success measure is customer satisfaction. Are all the internal and external customers we interface with happy with the support they get from IT? Are we providing good value for the investment in IT? I do assessments, and at times I bring in outside help to determine how well we are doing as an organization. It’s a journey. We always want to be getting better.

Also, are the people working in IT happy? Do they enjoy the projects and working with their fellow team members here? That is the type of culture the company wants to have for everyone, in every department.

What advice do you have for someone about to launch a CIO job search?

Dive in! When I got started, I reached out to let people know I was looking. I talked to as many people as I could. It was nerve wracking at first to manage all the people I was talking to, and who had connected me with whom. I had to draw a chart to keep track of it all. But it was worth it. Once I got through that, things got rolling.

But there were lulls when I was asking myself, “where is the interest, where are the opportunities?” Just when I feared there wasn’t any interest, things would open up again. There are always peaks and valleys, so be ready for that. It may just come down to timing, like in my case.

It’s tough and stressful. It’s a six, nine, or even 12-month process. It’s not likely to happen in the first few months that you are searching. For me it was nearly 8 months.

Having to start from zero with no connections was a mistake. It took me at least a month to six weeks to just to spin that up. Some early versions of my resume that I put out there weren’t nearly as good as later versions, and that was a mistake. I guess I made the mistakes of anyone who has been with one company for 28 years.

About Norm Fjeldheim

Norm-Fjeldheim-CIO-IlluminaNorm Fjeldheim is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Illumina, a global leader in DNA sequencing and array-based technologies used in the life sciences, oncology, and agriculture. Fjeldheim is also Head of Global Facilities Management Services. Prior to joining Illumina in 2016, Fjeldheim served as Senior Vice President and CIO at Qualcomm for 17 years. 

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