Success Story: IT management for operations & digitalization in a municipal environment successfully filled

Kontrast fills IT management position in the public sector in North Rhine-Westphalia: Executive for IT operations, ERP, IT security and digitization of core processes signs on

Kontrast Personalberatung GmbH has once again successfully filled a difficult-to-fill management position in IT management: A divisional head of IT with a focus on IT operations and digitalization in a municipal environment has been awarded after a structured selection process - the new, professionally experienced executive has signed the employment contracts.

When repeated job advertisements are not enough

The initial situation was typical for many organizations with high digital pressure: the position had already been advertised repeatedly, but without lasting success. The bottleneck lay not in formal qualifications, but in the combination of stable operational responsibility and genuine expertise in the digitalization of core business processes. In practice, it is precisely this interface that determines whether digitalization is "managed" as a program or "delivered" as a result.

IT management search profile: operational security plus transformation power

The mandate was not about an "admin job", but about management responsibility with breadth and depth. The focus was on

• IT operations & service capability (availability, standards, provider/service provider management)

• Digitalization of central processes (end-to-end, specialist departments, governance)

• ERP proximity / application responsibility (requirements, roadmap, operation)

• IT security & compliance (risk, measures, maturity level)

• Leadership & change (team, stakeholders, implementation discipline)

Procedure: Direct approach to IT managers instead of a hopeful run

Kontrast consistently focused its candidate recruitment on executive search / direct approach, supplemented by an activated, thematically appropriate reach from its own network. The aim was to create a shortlist of managers who not only speak technology, but who have already been responsible for digitalization projects in organizations with rules and regulations, committee logic and high expectations of operational security.

At the same time, candidates were pre-qualified in a structured manner - professionally, leadership-related and in terms of their fit with the organizational reality.

Selection process: Clarity, comparability, decision-making certainty

In the subsequent selection process, the focus was placed on comparability and decision-making ability: Role understanding, implementation competence, leadership and stakeholder management were made clearly verifiable against each other. Result: The client was able to choose from several convincing profiles - and opted for a management personality who credibly combines operational stability and the ability to transform.

Result: Recruitment completed - digitalization gets leadership

With the signing of the contract, the recruitment process has been successfully completed. For the client, this means: the ability to act in the IT area, commitment to digitalization and leadership capacity to jointly manage IT operations, security requirements and process modernization - instead of playing these topics off against each other.

Why this success story is typical - and yet not "standard"

IT management roles that are difficult to fill rarely fail because of the budget alone, but because of the market reality: good people are not actively sought after, and many profiles only really appear resilient at second glance. In such mandates, it pays off that Kontrast works with permanently employed headhunters who bring together management know-how and psychologically sound suitability diagnostics - plus a clean process, confidentiality and GDPR-compliant candidate support.

To the project (job profile as reference):
https://www.kontrast-gmbh.de/de/stelle/it-leiter-stellenangebote/30561/