Interview Assessment
Name of Professional: Kimberly Pickens
Profession: Chief Financial Officer
Company: FISD
Date of Interview: 9/29/17
The second interview I made was with Mrs. Kimberly Pickens, Chief Financial Officer of Frisco ISD. She explained her outlook of her career, described the financial logistics, and explained the roles and opportunities that finance has to offer. Through this interview, I expected to gain more advice on Finance versus Marketing, the weaknesses and strengths of professions in this career, and how she made it as Chief Financial Officer.
To begin, Mrs. Pickens started off by telling me about her careers. She began as a marketing director in a small town that mainly connected with governments and big institutions. Later, she got an offer from FISD to become Chief Financial Officer of the district. The advice I took from that was the flexibility of finance. She did not waste any time becoming a financial officer and she had a quick adaptation to this career. Another key point I noticed was the need for strong connections in this career. Mrs. Pickens had high power connections which allowed her to receive these opportunities in her career. It makes sense to me because the more connections someone has, gives them more so called “Alliances” and a business relationship that becomes very strong if they maintain their conversations.
Next, she mentioned the present-day need for Marketing careers and financial careers. She strongly suggested finance because of the wide activities I can utilize with this career. Accounting, advising, investing, and managing were all opportunities I could gain from finance. On the other hand, marketing has a small window of opportunity and the need for those type of jobs is small. I agree with her comment on finance because the past articles I have read mentioned the types of investors, real estate, and accounting activities that uphold finance. Marketing versus finance was a big decision I had to make, so I really wanted to gain real world professional’s advice on how each job interacted with the present-day community. I want to focus my research on what each activity has to offer in finance and dedicate my view on two to three of them.
Along with working in the finance field, location was a major piece to take into account. Mrs. Pickens mentioned that financial careers were prominently in big downtown cities such as Dallas, Miami, and Austin. I agree with her because all the major headquarters and businesses are specifically downtown and near all other firms and companies. I like the idea of working in downtown because I know for a fact that connections is easier when I would be surrounded by other people of the same career. A weakness she stated in her company was the professional’s ability to adapt and communicate within finance. She overlooked the teams of her financial sector in FISD which meant she knew the weaknesses of people. I agree with the ability to communicate and adapt as a strong characteristic because those two are some of the things needed to become familiar and speak thoroughly with people and the company itself.
