Chief of Staff Search

Chief of Staff searches are unusual for one reason: the role means fundamentally different things in different organisations, and the differences are not superficial.

In one company, the Chief of Staff is an extension of the CEO — managing the operating rhythm, running cross-functional projects, preparing the executive team for board meetings, and handling the things that are too important to delegate but too time-consuming for the CEO to hold personally. In another, the Chief of Staff is closer to a senior programme manager with a prestigious title. In a third, it is a rotational development role for a high-potential operator who will move into a line function in 18 months.

These are three genuinely different jobs. The candidate who thrives in the first role may be wrong for the second and completely wrong for the third. A brief that doesn't resolve which version the company needs will attract the wrong candidates, evaluate them against the wrong criteria, and close on the wrong person — or not close at all.

What makes this search different

Most executive searches are about finding the best person for a defined function. The Chief of Staff search is partly about defining the function before you can find the person. This is not a flaw in the process — it is the nature of the role. The Chief of Staff is almost always a context-specific hire, shaped by the CEO's working style, the company's current priorities, and the gaps in the existing leadership team.

The intake conversation for this search is therefore different from a typical VP search. The most important questions are not about candidate profile. They are about the CEO: How does the CEO work? What takes their time that shouldn't? What is falling through the gaps in the leadership team? What decisions require coordination that currently isn't happening? What does the next 12 months require of the executive team that the current structure doesn't support?

Answers to these questions define the role. The role defines the search.

The capability question

Chief of Staff candidates come from unusually diverse backgrounds. Former management consultants, operational generalists, chiefs of staff from adjacent organisations, former founders, senior programme managers, executive assistants who have grown into operational roles. The credential map is wide and the signal is noisy.

What predicts performance in a Chief of Staff role is not a particular career path. It is a specific combination of capabilities: the ability to operate credibly across all functions without owning any of them, the judgment to know which problems need the CEO's attention and which can be resolved without it, and the communication precision to translate executive intent into cross-functional action without distortion.

These capabilities are real and observable — but they are not reliably signalled by title or background. Reference calls matter more in this search than in almost any other, because the question "how did this person function in relation to senior leadership?" is the most predictive data point available.

What closes this search

The searches that close well begin with a disciplined definition of the role — written not as a job description but as a working brief that captures what the CEO needs, what the organisation needs, and what success looks like at 6 and 12 months.

Candidates evaluated against this brief make faster decisions, in both directions. The ones who are wrong for the specific version of the role self-select out early. The ones who are right engage with the specificity of the brief and move through evaluation quickly.

Majhi Group runs retained Chief of Staff searches. The assessment begins with the role definition, not with the candidate pool.

If a Chief of Staff search is producing candidates who look right but aren't closing, request an assessment.