Hiring a Chief of Staff

Chief of Staff, executive assistant, COO or fractional: which should I hire?

Hire a Chief of Staff when the problem is priorities, the operating rhythm, communication and cross-functional projects across your leadership team. Other problems call for other hires. Your calendar, inbox and travel point to an executive assistant. One weak function points to a leader for that function, because a Chief of Staff has no line authority to fix it. Day-to-day execution across the company points to a COO, who owns execution and teams.

The sign that you need a Chief of Staff is that you have become the bottleneck: decisions wait for you, the leadership team runs on your memory, and cross-team work has no owner. If the work is real but fills only a few days a week, a fractional Chief of Staff is the honest hire. Before you decide, write two sentences: what is happening that shouldn't be, and what would be different in six months if someone owned it. If you can't fill both, start with an executive assistant or a fix to your leadership meeting.

What should I decide before I hire a Chief of Staff?

Decide four things before you post anything: why the role exists now, who the principal is, which decisions the Chief of Staff can make without you, and what success looks like in six months. Those answers set the level and the pay.

Write the decision rights as three lists: Decide (they decide alone), Recommend (they shape it and you decide) and Not own (another named owner holds it). Then rank the four core responsibilities for your role. Watch for three scope mistakes. A Decide list that spans more than two responsibilities describes several jobs. A list that includes managing teams or a P&L describes a COO. A list that is mostly calendar, travel and inbox describes an executive assistant.

Context moves the lists. Under 50 people, write a 90-day mandate and rewrite it at each review. At a large company, the Not own column matters most. A CTO or CFO needs a narrower Decide list, and remote teams need decisions recorded in writing. Our Chief of Staff mandate guide has a one-page template with the three tiers.

What level should a Chief of Staff be, and how does the level set the pay?

Set the level from the decisions the role will make, then pay to that level. A Chief of Staff who runs projects and logistics you assign is Analyst or Associate level. One who runs the leadership cadence and gives input before you decide is Manager level. One who owns the planning cycle and works as a peer to your direct reports is Director level. One who represents you in leadership and board work and makes calls in your absence is VP or Executive level.

Average base salary runs from $91,462 at Analyst level to $173,667 at Director and $193,999 at Executive level, according to the Chief of Staff Network's 2025 Salary Report (nearly 500 respondents). Company size moves pay almost as much: among postings that list pay, the median is $140k at companies with 11 to 50 employees and $215k at 5,001 to 10,000, according to our Pathways Report.

Under-leveling is the most expensive mistake, because every peer the Chief of Staff needs to influence then outranks them. If the budget doesn't reach the band, move items from Decide to Recommend instead of posting a Director scope at a Manager price.

Should I promote an internal candidate to Chief of Staff or hire from outside?

Check inside first, then hire outside. About a third of Chief of Staff hires are internal promotions (36%) and 64% come from outside, according to our 2024 analysis of Chief of Staff hires. Internal candidates bring trust, the scarcest input in this job. Look at who already does cross-team work your leaders rely on.

Internal hires carry one risk: a person promoted into a role built around them often keeps their old level, pay and half their old job. Re-level the role properly. Interview them as hard as an outsider, with the same work sample, and skip only the chemistry stage, so peers see that the seat was earned.

If you go outside, ask your network and your investors' network, post the role, and keep a search firm for senior roles where confidentiality matters. Look wider than consulting: 27% of postings ask for it, but only 7% of Chiefs of Staff came straight from it, according to the Chief of Staff Network's Pathways Report. Operations and strategy is the largest feeder, at 21%. Our guide on how people become Chiefs of Staff compares backgrounds.

How do you interview and test a Chief of Staff candidate?

Run four or five stages, each testing something different: a conversation with you on motivation and fit, a judgment interview, a panel with two or three of your direct reports, a work sample, and references. A focused process takes about four to eight weeks from first interview to signed offer. That is our recommendation; we don't survey hiring timelines.

The leadership panel is the most skipped stage and the most predictive, because your Chief of Staff will spend more time with your direct reports than with you. Give the panel a live disagreement to run, and ask each panelist: "Would you take this person's call on a busy Tuesday?"

Keep the work sample to two or three hours, built on a real problem you have already solved, and match it to the role's top responsibility: a leadership meeting agenda, a priority cut, a board update or a cross-team plan. For VP or Executive hires, use a 90-minute working session instead. Then call at least three references, including one peer. Our guide on how to hire a Chief of Staff includes the interview scorecard.

How should a CEO onboard a new Chief of Staff?

Prepare before day one. Tell your leadership team in writing what the role owns, what it doesn't and how disagreements get resolved. Give full access to your calendar, the leadership documents, the metrics and the board materials. Book a weekly 1:1 for decisions and context, and handle status in writing.

Then hand over one real problem in week one and let the Chief of Staff earn the rest. Your direct reports will decide in the first two weeks whether this person speaks for you. Expect at least one leader to read the new hire as your eyes and ears, so say in your first leadership meeting together what the Chief of Staff brings back to you and what stays between them and the leader.

Hold short reviews at day 30, 60 and 90. At day 90, update the written mandate, agree goals for the next two quarters and name the expected tour length and the likely next role. The Chief of Staff's side of the same months is in our first 90 days guide.

How do you keep a Chief of Staff from leaving or stalling?

Agree the tour and the next role when you hire, re-level the role as its scope grows, and bring your Chief of Staff into decisions while they are still being made. The median completed stint is 20 months, according to the Chief of Staff Network's Pathways Report (more than 2,100 moves). Those who leave within a year are the least likely to step up (38%), and the odds peak at two to three years (57%).

You can keep the person you hired if there is somewhere to go. Chiefs of Staff who stay at the same company step up 61% of the time, against 48% for those who leave. Two thirds (67%) of those who become VP or Head of Operations do it where they were Chief of Staff. When the role takes on the planning cycle, a budget or the board, check the level again. Add an analyst or coordinator before the operating work outgrows one person.

Name the likely next role in the offer, with a two-to-three-year tour, and revisit it every six months. Our guide on how to hire a Chief of Staff covers the offer and the tour.