There comes a point in a growing company when a CEO’s time becomes one of the business’s biggest constraints. Decisions are piling up, important initiatives need more attention, and too much still depends on one person to keep things moving.
This is often the point when companies start thinking about hiring a Chief of Staff. Increasingly, they are. Increasingly, they are. LinkedIn found that Chief of Staff roles grew by more than 50% across every U.S. private-sector industry it studied between 2019 and 2024. In technology, the number more than doubled, and grew by 102%.
But despite the growing popularity of the role, “Chief of Staff” remains one of the least standardized titles in business. That can make it one of the more difficult hires to get right. If you’re considering adding a Chief of Staff to your team, here are four things we recommend thinking through before you begin the search.
1.) Start with the problems you need this person to solve.
Before writing a job description, think about what is actually creating the need for the role. Is the CEO spending too much time keeping projects moving? Are important initiatives falling between departments? Does the leadership team need someone connecting priorities and following through on decisions? Does the CEO need a strategic thought partner, or simply more capacity?
A Chief of Staff can be a strategist, operator, project leader, gatekeeper, sounding board, or some combination of all of these. Defining the problem first makes it much easier to define the person you need to solve it.
A useful starting question: What should be working differently six months after this person joins?
2.) Be clear about what a Chief of Staff will own.
Once you understand the need, get specific about the mandate.
What will this person own outright? What will they manage on the CEO’s behalf? Where will they have decision-making authority? Which meetings, projects, and relationships will they be responsible for?
This is also the point to make sure you’re hiring for the right role. Sometimes what a leader really needs is an exceptional Executive Assistant or Executive Business Partner. Other times, the need is for a strategic operator who can take ownership across functions and help move the CEO’s agenda through the organization.
Neither role is inherently more valuable. They create leverage in different ways.
3.) Don’t get too attached to the title on someone’s résumé.
Now this one is important: The strongest candidate may not currently be a Chief of Staff.
Depending on the mandate, great candidates can come from strategy, operations, consulting, finance, project leadership, executive support, or other cross-functional roles. McKinsey’s research into Chief of Staff backgrounds found strategy and operations among the most common previous functions.
Rather than searching exclusively for a title, look for evidence that someone has already been doing the work: bringing structure to ambiguity, moving initiatives across teams, influencing without direct authority, communicating with senior stakeholders, and knowing when something needs the CEO’s attention and when it doesn’t.
4.) Hire for the relationship, not just the résumé.
This is a role built on trust. A Chief of Staff may have access to the company’s most sensitive information. They may need to challenge the CEO privately, represent them internally, navigate competing personalities, and make judgment calls without having time to ask for permission. Experience matters, but so do discretion, judgment, adaptability, communication style, and chemistry with the person they’ll support.
These qualities are difficult to evaluate through a résumé or keyword search. They require a human-centered recruiting and interview process designed to uncover how someone actually thinks and operates. You can screen for experience. You have to interview thoughtfully and thoroughly for judgment ability to shine through [LINK TO HUMAN JUDGEMENT POST].
Finding Your Chief of Staff
At Clarity, we’ve spent more than 25 years recruiting the people who work closest to leadership, from Executive Assistants and senior administrative professionals to operations leaders and Chiefs of Staff.
For a Chief of Staff search, we don’t start with a title. We start by understanding the executive, the business, and what this hire needs to accomplish. From there, we can help define the profile, identify candidates from both traditional and less obvious backgrounds, and evaluate the qualities that are much harder to capture on paper.
Our goal isn’t simply to find a great Chief of Staff, it’s to find the right Chief of Staff for your leadership style, your business, and what comes next.