Ask HN: Is there a "show us your work" for job hunting managers?

I'm a developer who followed the management track and found myself really enjoying it. After a few years of managing a decent sized IT department, I'm interested in putting out some feelers and seeing what else the market has available. No gripes with my current employer; I'm primarily looking for something that's more challenging. (A bump in compensation certainly wouldn't hurt either).

This is the first time that I'm job hunting as a manager and I'm not sure what's expected of me. One of the things we've always emphasized during the hiring process for developers is the same thing I see a lot here on HN: "We only care about one thing: what have you built and shipped? No resumes needed here, we just want to see what you can do." (From http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2542432)

Is there an equivalent for managers? I've really cleaned up my resume and made sure to highlight the things that I've achieved but it feels weird to be job hunting without a portfolio of things to show. Are my personal programming projects still relevant since I'll primarily be looking for a tech management position?

Any advice is appreciated.

Most managerial interviews are based on Behavioral Interviewing. The logic is that how you behaved in the past is the best predictor of how you will behave in the future. If you Google, you'll find lots of typical questions. You should take time to think of specific situations from your past that demonstrate how you handled certain managerial tasks. You'll also find that companies will want to know if you are a "strategy" guy or an "implementation" guy, so it's good to think about what kind of decisions you want to have responsibility over. I think it's okay to say both, but you will need to back up your answer and give examples of how you acted in those situations in the past.

I always point to the team's accomplishment and say "We built this", and then point out the part that I worked on specifically.

People apportion credit to the leadership differently, so there is no shame in saying "I lead the team that built this thing" and letting the reader decide how awesome that makes you specifically.

Hey, if you're still looking, we're doing early testing on an online portfolio service that might meet your needs. I'd be glad to send you an invite.

Email me at tim -at- bitsmachine -dot- com

http://bitsmachine.com

Example portfolio (mine): http://timbarkow.bitsm.com

On the management level much of the concern will be on your leadership skills and how you handle projects and the team(s) working on them. So to answer your question personal programming projects are still relevant, but interviewers will also be concerned with the business and leadership side of things.

I'm also having the same dilemma since I'll be attending an interview tomorrow for a tech lead position and the job post was specific about the functional/business responsibilities.

BTW If you're looking for a place to store your portfolio (or resume, however you want to call it) properly, here's my project just for that: http://www.cvstash.com It works because that's what I used that resulted in the call, which, in turn, resulted in tomorrow's interview.