WDA Careers / Chief of Staff Search / Hire a Chief of Staff

How to hire a Chief of Staff

Before meeting candidates, define the work this person will own, the decisions they can make and how they will work with leadership. An unclear brief makes it harder to assess candidates and establish expectations for the hire.

Three decisions to make before you start

A Chief of Staff can only be as effective as the authority and focus you give them. Settle three things first, and write them down.

What moves off your desk. Name the specific work that currently waits on you and that someone else should carry. Use concrete examples to test whether there is a coherent role with enough scope and authority.
What they can decide. Decision rights stated plainly: where they act without you, where they recommend and where you keep the call. Be explicit about where the role can act and where the principal keeps the decision.
What should be better in six months. The test the hire will be judged against. It keeps the search focused and gives the person a clear target from day one.

Define the role before writing the job description

The same title covers very different jobs. At one company the Chief of Staff is effectively a strategy leader. At another they run business operations or the principal’s office across professional and personal matters. A mandate brief makes the version you need explicit:

Who the role supports and the reporting line, usually directly to the principal.
The responsibilities it owns, described as outcomes rather than tasks.
The leaders it works through, and whether they have agreed to that arrangement.
Information access and confidentiality, since the role sees what is not broadly shared.
Pace, location and travel, stated honestly, because they decide who can do the job.

A clear brief gives the job description its substance. See the Chief of Staff job description template.

Match the profile to the mandate

These four patterns can help describe the role. They often overlap; use the work itself to identify relevant experience.

Strategy-ledShapes priorities, runs planning and special projects. Often suits people from strategy, consulting or corporate development.
Operations-ledOwns the operating cadence and cross-functional execution. Often suits business and executive operations leaders.
Office of the principalManages the principal’s priorities across professional and sometimes personal matters, common in family offices and founder’s offices.
Initiative-ledCarries a defined set of high-priority initiatives through to completion, such as an integration, a launch or a reorganization.

Prior Chief of Staff experience helps, but it is not required. What matters is whether the candidate has owned work like yours, and what they could decide while doing it.

Internal promotion, your network or a retained search

Internal promotion. The candidate already knows the business and has the principal’s trust. The risk is standing: peers may not accept a former colleague acting with the principal’s authority. Test with a defined initiative first.
Your network. Fast and familiar. It narrows the field to people you already know, and it is awkward to decline a referral who does not fit the mandate.
A retained search. Slower to start, but it brings a view of the market, a consistent assessment and a confidential process. It suits senior, sensitive or unusual mandates, and principals who have hired the role before without success.

For more on when outside help is worth it, see what a Chief of Staff recruiter does.

How to assess Chief of Staff candidates

A résumé shows where someone has been. It does not show how they will operate next to you. Build the assessment around real work:

Use one of your actual priorities.Ask finalists how they would approach a live problem from the mandate. Listen for how they frame it, what they ask and what they would do first.
Test disagreement.Push back on their answer. Look for someone who can explain a view, respond to challenge and raise difficult issues constructively.
Meet the people they will work through.Their peers on the leadership team should meet finalists. The role depends on their cooperation.
Reference how they operated.Ask former principals what the candidate owned, what they could decide and what happened when priorities changed, not just whether they were good.

Set the hire up to succeed in the first 90 days

Announce the role and its authority.Tell the leadership team what the Chief of Staff owns and decides. Without that clarity, colleagues may not know when to involve or rely on the new hire.
Give them a first owned priority.One visible piece of work they can move early builds standing faster than shadowing does.
Set a standing cadence with the principal.A regular working session to align priorities, decisions and what should come back to you.
Review against the six-month test.Check progress against the outcome you defined at the start, and adjust the mandate if the business has moved.

Common mistakes when hiring a Chief of Staff

Hiring for the title. Choosing a candidate because they held the title elsewhere, without checking whether that job resembled yours.
Withholding decision rights. Hiring a senior operator and then routing every decision back through the principal.
Using a title that does not match the work. If the need is mainly calendar, travel and inbox, hire an Executive Assistant. See Chief of Staff vs Executive Assistant.
Skipping the announcement. If the leadership team does not understand the role, the hire may have to negotiate responsibilities that should have been agreed beforehand.

Common questions

Who should a Chief of Staff report to?

Directly to the principal they support: the founder, CEO, managing partner or family principal. The role draws its authority from that relationship, so a Chief of Staff reporting through another executive usually becomes a different job.

Does a Chief of Staff need prior Chief of Staff experience?

No. Many strong Chiefs of Staff come from business operations, strategy, consulting or finance. What matters is whether they have owned work like the mandate and operated at the principal’s level of trust and pace.

Can a Chief of Staff work remotely?

It depends on the mandate. Much of the role runs through presence: in leadership meetings, alongside the principal and with the teams doing the work. If the role can be remote or hybrid, say so in the mandate, because it changes who can do it.

How does WDA Careers run a Chief of Staff search?

Every search is retained and starts by defining the mandate with the principal. We then map operators who have done that kind of work, assess judgment and working fit as well as experience, and present a small shortlist. See Chief of Staff Search.

Define the mandate before you start the search.

Start a Search →

We conduct searches across the New York Tri-State Area, Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Southern California.