How to Hire Your First Operations Person

At some point, every growing business needs someone focused on operations. The founder can’t keep doing everything, and the team needs someone who wakes up every day thinking about how the business actually runs.

But this hire is tricky. Get it right and it changes the trajectory of your company. Get it wrong and you’ve added cost without solving the problem. Here’s how to think about it.

When You’re Ready (and When You’re Not)

You’re ready to hire an operations person when:

• You have repeatable revenue and a team of at least 5-10 people
• You’re spending more than half your time on internal operations instead of growth
• Processes exist in your head but nowhere else
• Things fall through the cracks regularly
• You know what needs to happen but can’t get to it

You’re not ready when:

• You haven’t figured out your business model yet
• You’re pre-product-market-fit
• You’re looking for someone to “figure out” what operations even means for your business (that’s your job first, or bring in a fractional operator to help define it)

The most common mistake is hiring an operations person before you know what you need them to do. If you can’t describe the role in concrete terms, you’re not ready.

What to Actually Look For

Bias toward action

Operations people need to get things done, not just plan things. Look for someone who has a track record of implementing, not just analyzing. Ask them to describe a process they built or improved. If they can’t give you specifics, keep looking.

Systems thinking

The best operations people don’t just fix problems. They build systems that prevent problems. When you describe a challenge, listen for whether they think in terms of one-time fixes or repeatable solutions.

Comfortable with ambiguity

If your business is under $10M, the operations role is going to be messy. There won’t be clean processes or a well-defined scope. The person needs to be comfortable figuring things out as they go, not waiting for someone to hand them a playbook.

Strong communication

Operations is a cross-functional role. This person will work with sales, finance, customer success, and you. They need to communicate clearly, push back when needed, and build trust across the team.

Not just an admin

This is the biggest hiring mistake I see. The business needs operational leadership, and they hire an executive assistant or office manager. Those roles are valuable, but they’re not the same thing. An operations person should be thinking about how the business runs, not just keeping your calendar organized.

The Role Should Start Narrow

Don’t hire an operations person and hand them everything. That’s a setup for failure. Start with one or two high-impact areas where you know the problems and can define what success looks like.

Good starting points:

• Process documentation. Get the core workflows out of people’s heads and into written form.
• Meeting rhythm. Set up and run the weekly leadership meeting, maintain the scorecard, and track follow-ups.
• Onboarding. Build a repeatable process for bringing on new clients or new employees.
• Reporting. Create the dashboards and reports that give you visibility into what’s working and what’s not.

Let them prove themselves in a focused area before expanding the scope. This builds trust on both sides and gives them early wins.

What to Pay

This varies a lot by market and experience level.

A junior operations manager or coordinator: $50K-$75K. Good for someone who can execute on processes you’ve already defined.

A senior operations manager: $80K-$120K. Someone who can own a function, build systems, and manage a small team.

A VP or Director of Operations: $120K-$180K+. Someone who can run the entire operational side of the business and take major responsibilities off the founder.

If you can’t justify the salary for the level you need, consider a fractional operator first. You get senior-level thinking at a fraction of the cost, and they can help you define the role for when you’re ready to hire full-time.

Set Them Up to Succeed

The number one reason operations hires fail is lack of clarity from the founder. If you hire someone and then hover over every decision, or change priorities every week, or don’t give them access to the information they need, they’ll fail regardless of how talented they are.

Before they start:

• Write down their top 3 priorities for the first 90 days. Be specific.
• Define their authority. What can they decide on their own? What needs your input?
• Give them access. Financials, client data, team context. They can’t run operations if they can’t see the business.
• Set a weekly check-in. Not to micromanage. To align, remove blockers, and provide context they don’t have yet.

After 90 days, you should both know whether this is working. If it is, expand their scope. If it isn’t, figure out why before making changes.

The Alternative: Start Fractional

If you’re not sure you need a full-time operations person, or if you need senior-level help but can’t justify the salary, a fractional COO or operations consultant can bridge the gap. They can come in, build the foundational systems, define the role, and even help you hire the right person when you’re ready.

There’s no shame in getting help figuring this out. The important thing is recognizing that your business needs operational leadership and taking a step toward solving it.

The Scale Readiness Score can help you figure out whether you need a full-time hire, a fractional operator, or just better systems.