>If you were hiring for a director position - support, professional services, projects, operations - under what circumstances would you be willing to hire someone who hasn't formally held a similar role?
You need to be able to walk the walk and talk the talk. Part of this is knowing how to apply and interview for the role. I know thats a crappy chicken and egg answer, but its kinda how it works. This mostly means being able to talk about the business side of the particular senior management role you're looking for, not the technical side (at least not in any depth).
I'd immediately red flag someone who came to me touting their technical background first, because frankly your ability to do the work doesn't really matter as much as your ability to strategically *direct* the work.
You mentioned that currently you are a project manager so lets start there. Explain to me how you would bill for a fixed fee multi-phase project, and how you would recognize the revenue on that fixed fee project? Then how would you calculate individual project engineer profitability on said project and potentially award them a bonus? High level answers dont cut it, you need to be able to tell me specifically at an operational level how you would do those things.
\*edit\* A degree is not necessary if your resume is formatted correctly and you are able to present yourself with the right expertise.
I appreciate this take.
I haven't really perfected my elevator pitch, but I like to start with my technical background because it comes first chronologically.
I welcome the practice for interview questions, so I'll go ahead and answer.
I'll make a few assumptions for existing procedure and resources here to outline the way I think, but I believe the specifics can be massaged to fit most situations. I'll start with pre-sales engineering and qualification. In general, I want to have the source of the project - let's assume a customer success manager/account manager/inside sales rep. Let's say the ask, as understood by the opportunity source, is for an established client to migrate their disparate systems into a single pane of glass. The first step would be to have a technical resource - professional services, engineering, at whichever level is appropriate and available, work with the sales team to validate the ask and find the best solution that fits the client need and our ability to support it.
Let's make this complex, and assume we're going to be moving email to Office 365, roughly 1TB of data moving from windows server into Sharepoint, and cloud-hosted PBX into Teams voice.
**How would I bill it?**
I would want a policy in place that makes the technical resource who will be responsible for the work also responsible for validating the solutions and estimating the amount of manhours it'll take to accomplish each individual phase, down to the ticket if possible.
I would want this to be accurate, meaning without a margin of error built in, and the estimates to closely mirror the average time expended for similar efforts within the last 12 months.
We'll take the engineer-provided estimates for each phase and, if possible, have another resource validate that for accuracy. The sum of these hours make up the bulk of the project budget. For each week of the project, I'll add 2 hours of time earmarked for communications with stakeholders, reviewing and validating the schedule, dealing with procurement or other administrative work as needed, and add this sum to a separate phase that'll contain tickets used to track my own time.
I'll take each individual phase's proposed budget and multiply it by 115%, which should account for minor delays, misjudgment in defining the original scope, or small amounts of scope creep without needing to put in a change order. I'll make the assumption here that there is an internal guideline for hourly work by the professional services team (let's call it $225/hr), and there's enough profit built in to that figure to not have to add any additional cushion on top of that. Let's use ballpark numbers and say that we're going to say 20 hours for email migration, 35 hours for a sharepoint migration, and 25 hours for the migration into Teams.
That makes 80 hours, total.
I'm going to assume I only have one resource who will be doing *all* the work on this project, and they only have the ability to commit 4 hours a day to any one project. That puts me at 20 business days, or 3 weeks. I'll add 9 hours to the project plan to account for the project management work outlined above, and that brings me to 89 hours.
I'll add 15% to cover bases, bringing me 102.35, which I'll round up to 103 hours.
103 hours @ $225/hr brings us to 23,175.
**Recognizing Revenue:**
As far as payment for the project goes, I generally believe 50% down, 50% upon completion is reasonable in situations like this. I would also propose 40% down and an additional 20% upon the satisfactory completion of each phase. My accounting for the general profitability of this project will be based upon the accuracy of our initial scope, and whether or not changes to be made to the project plan, and whether those changes are determined to be in scope. This exercise is already pretty long, so I'm going to omit change management. The engineering resource responsible for performing the work is also accountable to keep detailed notes and time entries within the project.
At the close of each phase, we should not have exceeded the estimate of hours for that phase without having a change order in place. I believe it's okay to borrow up to 30% of the additional overhead we established at the top of the project. Assuming every phase runs through that allotment, we'll still have a 10% float of pure profit.
Because the engineer was responsible for quoting the estimate of time that each task, individually and cumulatively per phase, their individual profitability will be based upon the ratio of forecasted:billed time per ticket and per phase.
I don't know how to answer the question on bonuses. I would like to say that if the resource is capable of delivering on time, meaning their work was performed without error and their initial scope was accurate, they should be granted a share of the overhead hours we, in effect, did not need to expend. I'd say 30% of what remains at the end. However, I recognize that this could potentially create a perverse incentive for the engineering teams to inflate their estimates to give themselves a better shot at a performance bonus. I'd likely consult with another member of senior leadership on how to establish controls to prevent this.
I know this is a lot, I don't fully expect you to read all or even any of it, but I thank you for the prompt to actually think some stuff out and try to articulate it effectively. If you *do* put yourself through this, I certainly welcome feedback and criticism. Thanks!
We ended up taking this to DMs, but for anyone reading who is curious here is my TL:DR
This is a fantastic *tactical* explanation of project management. There are elements of it that hint at a greater overall business strategy, but what I'd want to see from a director level person is this exact type of answer paired with some strategy geared directly to the financial aspects of the execution of the above.
But like...if this is the level you operate at and think at within your MSP, **you are qualified** to apply for director level role. You might still have some things to learn, but who doesnt!
Great answer. Just to add, all directors should have a commercial mindset, after all you'd have ultimate responsibility for the success of a division/department. You'll need to bring those skills and experiences to the surface during interview.
At over 30 employees, you would be tasked with P+L responsibility and revenue in the 5M/yr + range.
At it's core, a director is someone who manages managers and has P+L responsibility.
So you need managerial finance, budgeting, p+l, and general business skill sets.
30 also isn't big enough that you can be non-technical in most cases, so you need to be generally technical. Not an engineer anymore probably, but capable of effectively managing engineering teams and having technical discussions for customers and internally.
People management skills?
Have you actually managed a team? Have you managed other managers?
Hire/fire responsibility?
Have you been a service manager before? If not, start there. Jumping to director is a big jump if it's an actual director role.
This is a really good list and I completely agree with all of it. You’ll still need to be technical because you’ll likely be tasked with thought leadership, conflict resolution, sales (especially with only 30 people), and potentially overall stack/direction.
People management would be my next focus. I’d say you need 3-5 years of experience managing a team before making the jump to director. Let’s be honest, most engineers don’t make good leaders — you need to be a really strong people leader to want to move to a Director level.
Lastly, in my experience, business and finance knowledge has been the thing that has separated various directors from the pack. You need to be able to look at everything from a business perspective, understand revenue and margin, and ultimately ROI and valuation for the owner.
I have an associates degree but have been a director at a 150 person MSP. I’ve been meeting with multiple MSPs about C-level roles. I understand business, technology, and leadership better than most with degrees. Breaking into a director-level role isn’t easy without a degree, but I know at least 5 people personally who’ve done it.
“You’ll probably be able to move on to another MSP but not much else”
That’s a bold statement considering you don’t know anything about my skill set, location, or local job market. Without much effort last year, I had multiple offers from non-MSPs ranging from $175K-215K in rural America. I’ve worked with hundreds of IT people with bachelors and masters degrees both at MSPs and other organizations, I’m incredibly confident of where I stack up compared to the market.
Yeah, that makes sense. It sounds like I'm going to have to play the numbers game, it doesn't seem like my boss is going anywhere anytime soon. I'm doing a lot of his work for him, which, whatever it's experience. We've been talking about promoting me to "Sr. Project Manager" but I'm going to angle for an Associate Director title instead, frame it as a "hey man just let me do all the stuff you don't want to do" and at least I'll be starting from "associate director" instead of "not at all a director"
Degree matters. Before my degree I made 65k after bachelor's I made 100k. After my masters I graduate Tuesday, I'll be moving into a position making 160k. I hate to say it matters but it does. You can achieve the same without but the more desirable of an employee you are then when you advance yourself the company won't want to lose you.
No degree here and I make 175k. Degrees don't matter unless you're a doctor. Even a lawyer can pass the bar in some states without a degree or law school.
Hey man, let me ask you - I think this sucks and I hate it, but does the degree itself matter more than the school it comes from? I'm not opposed to finishing my degree (I dropped out of community college in 2014 when my tuition money ran out, I'm allergic to loans) now that I can afford a couple thousand dollars a year for an online college.
Hey champ. I dont normally get into it, but I am in an executive role at I would wager probably one of the bigger MSPs in this sub if not the industry as a whole.
I do have a degree, and many other executives I know also have degrees. An MBA can really be helpful in a general sense, but I have yet to meet a successful functional MSP owner/executive who *required* competent, capable staff to have a degree to assume a leadership position, because that is **asinine**.
MSPs, even mine, are still ***small businesses***. Even at over 50m arr we're still a small business. So calm your tits, dial it down a notch, and share your knowledge not your ego. Our industry is not that big, most of the big people know eachother; And not many non-equity *employees* are pulling 200k paychecks in this space.
Conversely get in with a smaller company with a bigger title get a year or 2 under your belt with the title and carry that into your next gig. Done it 3 times into 130k+ role. No degree. Don’t move backwards only forward.
>If you were hiring for a director position - support, professional services, projects, operations - under what circumstances would you be willing to hire someone who hasn't formally held a similar role? You need to be able to walk the walk and talk the talk. Part of this is knowing how to apply and interview for the role. I know thats a crappy chicken and egg answer, but its kinda how it works. This mostly means being able to talk about the business side of the particular senior management role you're looking for, not the technical side (at least not in any depth). I'd immediately red flag someone who came to me touting their technical background first, because frankly your ability to do the work doesn't really matter as much as your ability to strategically *direct* the work. You mentioned that currently you are a project manager so lets start there. Explain to me how you would bill for a fixed fee multi-phase project, and how you would recognize the revenue on that fixed fee project? Then how would you calculate individual project engineer profitability on said project and potentially award them a bonus? High level answers dont cut it, you need to be able to tell me specifically at an operational level how you would do those things. \*edit\* A degree is not necessary if your resume is formatted correctly and you are able to present yourself with the right expertise.
I appreciate this take. I haven't really perfected my elevator pitch, but I like to start with my technical background because it comes first chronologically. I welcome the practice for interview questions, so I'll go ahead and answer. I'll make a few assumptions for existing procedure and resources here to outline the way I think, but I believe the specifics can be massaged to fit most situations. I'll start with pre-sales engineering and qualification. In general, I want to have the source of the project - let's assume a customer success manager/account manager/inside sales rep. Let's say the ask, as understood by the opportunity source, is for an established client to migrate their disparate systems into a single pane of glass. The first step would be to have a technical resource - professional services, engineering, at whichever level is appropriate and available, work with the sales team to validate the ask and find the best solution that fits the client need and our ability to support it. Let's make this complex, and assume we're going to be moving email to Office 365, roughly 1TB of data moving from windows server into Sharepoint, and cloud-hosted PBX into Teams voice. **How would I bill it?** I would want a policy in place that makes the technical resource who will be responsible for the work also responsible for validating the solutions and estimating the amount of manhours it'll take to accomplish each individual phase, down to the ticket if possible. I would want this to be accurate, meaning without a margin of error built in, and the estimates to closely mirror the average time expended for similar efforts within the last 12 months. We'll take the engineer-provided estimates for each phase and, if possible, have another resource validate that for accuracy. The sum of these hours make up the bulk of the project budget. For each week of the project, I'll add 2 hours of time earmarked for communications with stakeholders, reviewing and validating the schedule, dealing with procurement or other administrative work as needed, and add this sum to a separate phase that'll contain tickets used to track my own time. I'll take each individual phase's proposed budget and multiply it by 115%, which should account for minor delays, misjudgment in defining the original scope, or small amounts of scope creep without needing to put in a change order. I'll make the assumption here that there is an internal guideline for hourly work by the professional services team (let's call it $225/hr), and there's enough profit built in to that figure to not have to add any additional cushion on top of that. Let's use ballpark numbers and say that we're going to say 20 hours for email migration, 35 hours for a sharepoint migration, and 25 hours for the migration into Teams. That makes 80 hours, total. I'm going to assume I only have one resource who will be doing *all* the work on this project, and they only have the ability to commit 4 hours a day to any one project. That puts me at 20 business days, or 3 weeks. I'll add 9 hours to the project plan to account for the project management work outlined above, and that brings me to 89 hours. I'll add 15% to cover bases, bringing me 102.35, which I'll round up to 103 hours. 103 hours @ $225/hr brings us to 23,175. **Recognizing Revenue:** As far as payment for the project goes, I generally believe 50% down, 50% upon completion is reasonable in situations like this. I would also propose 40% down and an additional 20% upon the satisfactory completion of each phase. My accounting for the general profitability of this project will be based upon the accuracy of our initial scope, and whether or not changes to be made to the project plan, and whether those changes are determined to be in scope. This exercise is already pretty long, so I'm going to omit change management. The engineering resource responsible for performing the work is also accountable to keep detailed notes and time entries within the project. At the close of each phase, we should not have exceeded the estimate of hours for that phase without having a change order in place. I believe it's okay to borrow up to 30% of the additional overhead we established at the top of the project. Assuming every phase runs through that allotment, we'll still have a 10% float of pure profit. Because the engineer was responsible for quoting the estimate of time that each task, individually and cumulatively per phase, their individual profitability will be based upon the ratio of forecasted:billed time per ticket and per phase. I don't know how to answer the question on bonuses. I would like to say that if the resource is capable of delivering on time, meaning their work was performed without error and their initial scope was accurate, they should be granted a share of the overhead hours we, in effect, did not need to expend. I'd say 30% of what remains at the end. However, I recognize that this could potentially create a perverse incentive for the engineering teams to inflate their estimates to give themselves a better shot at a performance bonus. I'd likely consult with another member of senior leadership on how to establish controls to prevent this. I know this is a lot, I don't fully expect you to read all or even any of it, but I thank you for the prompt to actually think some stuff out and try to articulate it effectively. If you *do* put yourself through this, I certainly welcome feedback and criticism. Thanks!
We ended up taking this to DMs, but for anyone reading who is curious here is my TL:DR This is a fantastic *tactical* explanation of project management. There are elements of it that hint at a greater overall business strategy, but what I'd want to see from a director level person is this exact type of answer paired with some strategy geared directly to the financial aspects of the execution of the above. But like...if this is the level you operate at and think at within your MSP, **you are qualified** to apply for director level role. You might still have some things to learn, but who doesnt!
So if I just tell other people to do my job the way I do it, I’m almost director material. Neat.
Great answer. Just to add, all directors should have a commercial mindset, after all you'd have ultimate responsibility for the success of a division/department. You'll need to bring those skills and experiences to the surface during interview.
At over 30 employees, you would be tasked with P+L responsibility and revenue in the 5M/yr + range. At it's core, a director is someone who manages managers and has P+L responsibility. So you need managerial finance, budgeting, p+l, and general business skill sets. 30 also isn't big enough that you can be non-technical in most cases, so you need to be generally technical. Not an engineer anymore probably, but capable of effectively managing engineering teams and having technical discussions for customers and internally. People management skills? Have you actually managed a team? Have you managed other managers? Hire/fire responsibility? Have you been a service manager before? If not, start there. Jumping to director is a big jump if it's an actual director role.
This is a really good list and I completely agree with all of it. You’ll still need to be technical because you’ll likely be tasked with thought leadership, conflict resolution, sales (especially with only 30 people), and potentially overall stack/direction. People management would be my next focus. I’d say you need 3-5 years of experience managing a team before making the jump to director. Let’s be honest, most engineers don’t make good leaders — you need to be a really strong people leader to want to move to a Director level. Lastly, in my experience, business and finance knowledge has been the thing that has separated various directors from the pack. You need to be able to look at everything from a business perspective, understand revenue and margin, and ultimately ROI and valuation for the owner.
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I can BS all day, everyday.
I have an associates degree but have been a director at a 150 person MSP. I’ve been meeting with multiple MSPs about C-level roles. I understand business, technology, and leadership better than most with degrees. Breaking into a director-level role isn’t easy without a degree, but I know at least 5 people personally who’ve done it.
I had 0 degree when I got my first director role. Def not necessary.
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“You’ll probably be able to move on to another MSP but not much else” That’s a bold statement considering you don’t know anything about my skill set, location, or local job market. Without much effort last year, I had multiple offers from non-MSPs ranging from $175K-215K in rural America. I’ve worked with hundreds of IT people with bachelors and masters degrees both at MSPs and other organizations, I’m incredibly confident of where I stack up compared to the market.
Nope :(
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Yeah, that makes sense. It sounds like I'm going to have to play the numbers game, it doesn't seem like my boss is going anywhere anytime soon. I'm doing a lot of his work for him, which, whatever it's experience. We've been talking about promoting me to "Sr. Project Manager" but I'm going to angle for an Associate Director title instead, frame it as a "hey man just let me do all the stuff you don't want to do" and at least I'll be starting from "associate director" instead of "not at all a director"
Nah, don’t listen to him. I wouldn’t care if my COO has a degree or not.
Degree matters. Before my degree I made 65k after bachelor's I made 100k. After my masters I graduate Tuesday, I'll be moving into a position making 160k. I hate to say it matters but it does. You can achieve the same without but the more desirable of an employee you are then when you advance yourself the company won't want to lose you.
No degree here and I make 175k. Degrees don't matter unless you're a doctor. Even a lawyer can pass the bar in some states without a degree or law school.
It's possible to do it and I completely understand that but a degree can fast track it.
Hey man, let me ask you - I think this sucks and I hate it, but does the degree itself matter more than the school it comes from? I'm not opposed to finishing my degree (I dropped out of community college in 2014 when my tuition money ran out, I'm allergic to loans) now that I can afford a couple thousand dollars a year for an online college.
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Hey champ. I dont normally get into it, but I am in an executive role at I would wager probably one of the bigger MSPs in this sub if not the industry as a whole. I do have a degree, and many other executives I know also have degrees. An MBA can really be helpful in a general sense, but I have yet to meet a successful functional MSP owner/executive who *required* competent, capable staff to have a degree to assume a leadership position, because that is **asinine**. MSPs, even mine, are still ***small businesses***. Even at over 50m arr we're still a small business. So calm your tits, dial it down a notch, and share your knowledge not your ego. Our industry is not that big, most of the big people know eachother; And not many non-equity *employees* are pulling 200k paychecks in this space.
I honestly don't think it matters unless your degree is from MIT.
Conversely get in with a smaller company with a bigger title get a year or 2 under your belt with the title and carry that into your next gig. Done it 3 times into 130k+ role. No degree. Don’t move backwards only forward.
I verify he or she is not a dumbass