Auto Apply to hundreds of jobs in a few hours

Español

日本語

Chief of Staff skills: what to learn first, and what can wait

A chief of staff gets hired for judgment, but judgment is hard to see on paper, so the skills that open the door are the visible ones: clean writing, tight decks and a planning process you've actually run. Get those solid first. The harder stuff, like speaking for your executive without overstepping, is what separates the people who get offers from the people who get promoted out of the seat.

230 open jobs

Step one

Gets you the interview

Writing a one-page decision memoYour executive reads dozens of documents a week and wants the recommendation in the first paragraph, the options below it and the risks at the bottom. Many hiring processes include a take-home writing exercise, so bring a real memo you wrote, lightly scrubbed.

Board and leadership decks in Google Slides or PowerPointYou'll build the monthly business review, the offsite pre-read and pieces of the board deck. Screeners look for slides with an action title on every page and a story that holds up when someone skips ahead.

Spreadsheet modeling in Excel or Google SheetsHeadcount plans, budget scenarios and a quick model of what happens if a launch slips a quarter. You don't need to be a finance analyst, but you can't wait on one every time the CEO asks a what-if.

Running projects in Asana, Notion or JiraChiefs of staff own the tracker for cross-functional initiatives that belong to nobody else. Show you've set one up, kept owners honest about dates and closed it out.

Step two

Gets you the offer

Designing an operating cadenceThe weekly leadership meeting, the monthly business review and the quarterly planning cycle, each with a clear agenda, pre-read and owner. Final rounds often ask how you'd fix a leadership meeting that runs long and decides nothing, so have a specific answer.

OKRs or a similar goal-setting systemYou'll draft company objectives with your executive, push teams to write key results they can measure and run the check-ins. Know where OKRs go wrong, like sandbagged targets or too many objectives, not just the textbook version.

Pulling metrics from Looker, Tableau or a finance exportYour principal will ask why a number moved before the leadership meeting starts. Being able to open the dashboard, find the driver and write two sentences about it is what makes you useful on day one.

Planning a leadership offsite end to endSetting goals for the offsite with the CEO, interviewing the leadership team beforehand, building the agenda and turning the output into owned action items. Interviewers ask about this because it shows whether you think past logistics.

Step three

Gets you promoted

Speaking for your executive without oversteppingKnowing which calls you can make in your principal's name, which need a quick check and which you should never touch. People who get this right become the obvious pick for head of operations or general manager roles.

Annual planning and budget allocationRunning the process where every department asks for more headcount than the company can afford, then helping the executive team decide. It teaches you how the whole business trades off, which is what operating jobs need.

Owning a business line or turnaround projectTaking over a struggling function for a few months, like a stalled partnerships team or a messy sales handoff, and fixing it yourself. It gives you a result with your name on it, which the seat rarely does.

Board relations and investor updatesDrafting the monthly investor update, prepping board members before meetings and tracking follow-ups from the last one. Exposure to the board is where chiefs of staff build the relationships that lead to their next job.

Put it on your résumé like this

Weak

Supported the CEO on strategic initiatives and special projects across the company.

Strong

Ran the operating cadence for a 9-person executive team: rebuilt the weekly leadership meeting and quarterly OKR process, cut the board deck prep cycle from 3 weeks to 8 days, and led a pricing project that added $1.4M in annual revenue.

Questions people ask

Do I need an MBA to become a chief of staff?

No. Plenty of chiefs of staff have one because they came from consulting, but executives hire on proof you can run a planning process and write clearly. A strong record of cross-functional projects will do more for you than the degree.

What's the most underrated chief of staff skill?

Taking notes that turn into action. After every leadership meeting, someone has to send the decisions, the owners and the dates within the hour. Do that reliably and people start bringing problems to you before they go to your executive.

Should I learn SQL for this job?

It helps at a data-heavy software company, where you'll want to answer a question without filing a ticket. At most companies, being comfortable in a BI tool and a spreadsheet is enough. Learn SQL if the postings you're targeting mention it.

How technical does a chief of staff to a CTO need to be?

Technical enough to follow an architecture review, read a roadmap in Jira and know why a migration is slipping. You won't write code, but engineers will stop explaining things to you if you can't keep up with the basics.

Got step one? Start applying. HeroApply matches you to roles that fit.

Start your trial