CIO — Stephanie Cline, former CIO of Jack in the Box, spoke with executive recruiter Jane Howze in January 2007. Cline retired from Jack in the Box in February 2007 after a 28-year career with the San Diego, Calif.-based fast-food chain.

Jane Howze: Who was the first person you ever hired? What company were you working for and in what capacity?

Stephanie Cline: The first person I hired was here at Jack in the Box 25 years ago. I remember at the time that I was not nervous—just thrilled to be able to make my first hire. I managed a small group, and I hired a young fellow by the name of Tom Sawyer who had about two years of experience working as a programmer analyst. During that first interview, he came across as a genuine, quality person with a "solid citizen" demeanor. He appeared to be the type of person who would be sincere, honest, hard-working and a really good employee. Of course, he also had the exact technical experience I was seeking. Tom is still with the company today as director of our distribution and restaurant development systems group.

Did you receive training about how to hire?

None at all. Back then they promoted you into management and off you went. I was very new when I made my first hire, but it worked out well. Frankly, I did a little reading on my own. One of the articles I read was from a search firm that talked about conducting an interview and gave examples of good interview questions. I also used my own common sense, social skills and intuition. I didn't realize then that there was a method to it and that you could learn about it. However, relying on intuition probably worked as well as relying on more professional interviewing techniques.

Is hiring instinctive, or can you teach people how to make good hires? Do you feel that you're an instinctive hiring manager, or that you've gotten better over the years through experience and training?

I think I have good instincts and have received training coupled with lots of experience. I also think people can learn the skills to make good hiring decisions even if it is not instinctive for them. One of the skills you need is the ability to get to the heart of a person's mode of operation fairly quickly since you don't have a lot of time to get to know them during an interview. To that end, I like to get people to talk about what they've accomplished and how they've done it so that I can get a flavor of how their accomplishments and methodologies would translate to how they could meet the needs of Jack in the Box.

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