Get the role

What is the best way to get a Chief of Staff job?

Build a record of cross-functional work, get close to how your leaders run the business, and earn one principal's trust through people who know your work. Chief of Staff roles are filled in four ways: a promotion into a role created for someone inside, a role the candidate proposes, a backfill when a Chief of Staff moves on, or an open application. Three of the four start with a relationship.

Relationships carry that weight because a principal is about to hand over their calendar, their board materials and their half-formed opinions. An interview can't test whether you will keep a confidence in month eight. 64% of Chief of Staff hires come from outside the company, according to our 2024 hiring data, but external rarely means cold. When Aria Finger, Chief of Staff to Reid Hoffman, asks rooms of Chiefs of Staff whether they knew their principal first, she hears "about 50/50" in an informal poll.

Start with a list of five leaders you would want to work for, and find a real reason to work with each in the next six months. See our guide on how to become a Chief of Staff.

Where can I find Chief of Staff job openings?

Spend most of your search time on relationships, and use job boards to see where demand is. The posted market is steady: 400 to 500 new Chief of Staff postings a month from June to September 2026, from 1,400+ employers, led by New York and the SF Bay Area, according to the Chief of Staff Network's Pathways Report.

Many roles never reach a board. They move through short notes to leaders whose work interests you, events, other Chiefs of Staff and communities where roles get shared early. Founders and recruiters often ask current Chiefs of Staff who they would recommend, so getting to know people in the role is a search strategy of its own.

This week, tell three senior people you trust that you want a Chief of Staff role and what kind of principal you want. Keep each outreach note under 150 words, with the first line about the reader. Our guide on how to become a Chief of Staff has an outreach template.

How do I write a Chief of Staff resume that gets interviews?

Write it like the job. Show decisions you shaped, teams you aligned and outcomes with numbers, and cut responsibilities to a line per role. The reader is a busy executive asking one question: can this person run work across my company without me?

The most common mistake is to describe support. "Supported the CEO with board meeting preparation" says you were near the work. "Ran board prep for 4 quarterly meetings; cut deck turnaround from 2 weeks to 5 days" says you did it. If you have no number, use scale: how many teams, how many people, how much money. Anna Buckley, a two-time Chief of Staff at Barstool Sports, put it plainly: "Your success can't be anecdotal, and it has to be quantifiable."

Before you rewrite, draft three one-line proof sentences, one each for cross-functional delivery, judgment and clear writing. Those are three of the four things hiring executives look for. The fourth, discretion, is best shown by a reference who says so without being asked. Our guide on how to become a Chief of Staff has before-and-after bullet rewrites.

How do I prepare for a Chief of Staff interview?

Prepare to show that you can think like the principal and get work done without authority. Expect a prioritization exercise, a writing test or case study, a leadership team round, reference checks and a long conversation with the principal. That conversation decides the hire, and it runs both ways.

Have two stories ready, each under two minutes. In one, you moved work through a team that didn't report to you, and you can name who resisted and what you traded. In the other, you told a senior person something unwelcome, and you can say what they did next. In a case study, ask one or two clarifying questions, state your assumptions and recommend something, because a balanced list of options reads as consulting.

Interview the principal back. Ask what they will stop doing once you start, who on the leadership team was most skeptical about hiring a Chief of Staff, and what the next twelve months look like on funding and headcount. The strongest thing to bring to a final round is a one-page draft of your first 90 days, labeled as a draft. It turns the interview into a working session.

How do I know if a Chief of Staff job offer is fair?

A Chief of Staff offer is fair when the base sits inside the middle-50% range for its level and the role has a written scope and a path after it. Compare the base with the figures for your level, company size and city, and when the level and size benchmarks disagree, use the lower as your floor and the higher as your ask. For a Director-level role, the Chief of Staff Network's 2025 Salary Report gives an average base of $173,667, with a middle half of $132K to $202K.

Then check what sits around the base. Ask what the bonus is tied to and how often it has paid out in full in the last two years. For private-company equity, get the share count, the fully diluted shares, the strike price and the last preferred price, and value it at zero when you compare offers.

Last, check the scope. You should know which leaders the role sits beside, which decisions you can make without asking, and the date of a written compensation review. A role with no mandate turns into an expensive executive assistant job. Our salary guide has an offer checklist and three worked offers.

How do I negotiate a Chief of Staff salary offer?

Negotiate the level and scope first, then the base, then bonus and equity. The case rests on three things: the level your scope maps to, the market figure for that level and company size, and outcomes you can put numbers on.

Ask in the second interview which leaders the role sits beside. If the answer is the VPs, the VP average is $186,739 in the Chief of Staff Network's 2025 Salary Report. Anchor with the figures for your level and company size, and open with what the role will return, such as the planning cycle and board deck taken off the CEO's desk. If a startup can't move the base, ask for the title, a 12-month compensation review and a larger grant, all in writing. Tie the bonus to metrics you can affect, not to principal discretion.

Before the first call, write a reverse job description: one page, just for you, with the work you want, the level, your compensation floor and where you want to be in two years. When a persuasive founder starts trading your title for "huge upside", that page stops you agreeing in the room. Our salary guide includes a counteroffer email.

What mistakes do new Chiefs of Staff make in their first months?

The two classic mistakes pull in opposite directions. Some new Chiefs of Staff go quiet for a month and surface to find the role defined as whatever nobody else wanted. Others start fixing things on day two and spend month two repairing relationships. The fix is to take one real task off your principal's plate in week one and change nothing else until you have listened.

Most other traps come from a role nobody defined. The "chief of stuff" fills the week with other teams' favors. A new Chief of Staff gets told off for overstepping, then for not owning enough. The 1:1 turns into a weekly fire drill, the work stays invisible to everyone but the principal, and burnout follows from being the only backstop. If nobody wrote your mandate, draft it yourself in week 3 and agree it with your principal in week 4.

The stakes are real. The median Chief of Staff stays 20 months, and those who leave inside a year are the least likely to step up next (38%, against 57% at two to three years), according to the Chief of Staff Network's Pathways Report. Our first 90 days plan covers each phase.