The Right Role at the Right Level
Summary:
Before diving into hiring decisions, clarify your organization's key challenges by identifying what's happening that shouldn't be, what's missing, what works but feels fragile, and where you want to be in 1- 3+ years. The right role at the right level aligns with both immediate needs and future growth, while hiring too junior or too senior can lead to costly mistakes in time, money, and team effectiveness.
What’s in it for you:
You want to avoid the financial and cultural costs of misaligned hires
You need a practical framework for assessing your organization's actual needs
You're looking for warning signs before making an expensive hiring mistake
Helia’s Perspective
Hiring at the wrong level isn't just a minor mistake—it's often an expensive one that impacts morale, productivity, and your organization's ability to deliver on its mission. I've seen this play out so many times: a founder hiring a Chief of Staff when they really need an Executive Assistant to manage their calendar. Or a small nonprofit bringing on a part-time coordinator when what they truly need is a full-time manager who can own whole systems.
It's really easy to say, "I'm just going to hire a coordinator to help me move things!" It's also just as easy to decide you need a high-level leader because things feel so of,f and you just need someone who knows what they're doing to help carry the load.
This is my hard-earned (aka lots of mistakes along the way!) take on how to think this through before you budget, interview, and hire someone who isn't actually what you need.
Story
I've made every hiring mistake in the book. I once spent over a year looking for a "unicorn" because I just knew they were out there. I've hired folks I knew were wrong because I got ahead of myself. I even selected people for interviews just because they had cool names (you had to be there—and Sloane Flashman says it all!).
While my preference is to hire entirely based on my intuition(!)—I've learned that there are REALLY good reasons we need a structured approach. Getting the level right isn't just about titles or salaries. It's about understanding what your organization actually needs—now AND in the future.
Let me share just two quick examples from my hiring hits and misses:
Just recently at Helia, I hired a Chief of Staff who had high-level design expertise, had managed brand development, knew the market we were entering (which I did not!), and had been a CoS at a fast-growing agency. I thought they were exactly right and would push me, evolve our work, and teach me everything I didn't know.
Lupe + I -with our former colleague Keith Brown rocking it at a conference in Georgia as part of the team growing Rev Foods to $170M across the country!
What I realized too late was that while they might be helpful as a thought partner to learn from or to react to things, Helia needed more of an autonomous doer who could see all the pieces and was used to PRODUCING. The first hire took a month to write a creative brief (before transitioning out in the 5th week) whereas the second hire had a detailed project plan by the third day, had their hands on keyboard by the end of the first week, and by the end of the second, had opinions on how we could do our work better.
I should have thought: who will take the onboarding plan and make it happen versus who will read and have feedback but not be "in" it? Both were CoS roles—but very different types of people with different approaches to the work!
On the flip side, I hired Lupe Lugo, a former Target General Manager, to sell healthy lunches to schools!!! On the surface, it didn’t make any sense and anyone that had that breadth of know how coupled with a focus on getting things done (with added diligence from her previous world of legal research) would be able to figure out everything that came at her as we built a wildly intensive operational business. She was incredibly successful and one of my favorite people to ever work with - and continues in school sales today!
What this Looks Like in Practice
This isn’t about a perfect process -it’s about thinking through all the things ahead of time that need thinking about so you KNOW going in what you’re looking for - and then having the patience to go for it (—and trusting yourself and your team along the way!).
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Before you even think about titles or levels, get crystal clear on the work that needs doing. Start with these four questions:
What keeps happening that shouldn't?
What's not happening that should?
What's working but feels fragile?
Where do we want to be in one year? Two to three? Beyond?
At one organization, the CEO was drowning in administrative tasks. The executive team decided they needed a Chief of Staff to manage the CEO's workflow and provide strategic support. They hired someone with an impressive background in fundraising and strategy.
Six months in, both the CEO and the CoS were frustrated. The CoS spent hours crafting strategic briefs and coordinating executive initiatives, but the CEO's calendar was still a mess, emails went unanswered, and basic logistics fell through the cracks. What they needed wasn't high-level strategic support—they needed exceptional administrative coordination.
Example - the CEO needs more administrative support. Do you want to hire an EA or Ops Manager or Chief of Staff, OR take it all the way to a Deputy Director to really hold some of the work? It's easy to slot into one of these - or to write a job description that's just what feels the most painful in the moment (could someone PLEASE organize the calendar and take notes/send out next steps from meetings). And, you do NOT want to hire a CoS if you need expenses coded, emails drafted, and office supplies in-house - just like you don't want an EA if what you really need is someone to help lead the team so the CEO can step away from the day-to-day.
More HERE on how we think about doing this (aka let’s go deeper!) and a quick reference guide/cheat sheet on some common levels + roles HERE.
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A common mistake is hiring at too senior a level because we want to signal importance, then not actually giving that person the authority that comes with the title.
Let's talk about what different levels really mean:
Coordinators/Associates organize and support others' work
Managers oversee daily operations and supervise small teams
Directors lead major functions with significant decision-making power
C-Suite/VPs drive organizational strategy and major initiatives
If you're not ready to let someone make significant decisions independently, don't hire at the Director level. If you need someone who can build systems from scratch, a Coordinator probably won't have the experience or authority to make it happen.
Going back to my CoS example, I realized I'd been looking for a high-level thought partner, but what we actually needed was someone who could see projects through from start to finish. Both were officially "Chief of Staff" roles, but the successful hire was someone who took ownership and executed, rather than someone who primarily offered strategic input.
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Every level of hire requires different support from you and your organization:
Junior roles need more training, oversight, and clear direction
Mid-level roles need context and connections to do their work
Senior roles need authority, information, and strategic alignment
Be honest about the support you can provide. If you don't have time to train someone, don't hire at the coordinator level. If you're not ready to share decision-making, don't hire at the director level.
I remember hiring a Director of Development at a previous organization who came with incredible fundraising experience. Six months in, they were frustrated because I wasn't ready to have them independently manage our largest donor relationships. The title suggested authority I wasn't actually willing to give. We should have hired a Development Manager instead -which would have set clearer expectations from the start and created less friction for everyone.
Secret Sauce & Takeaways
Assess your current team capabilities: Don't ignore what you already have before bringing someone new in. At Think of Us, we realized we had three team members who were doing informal project management, but no one was formally owning it. This insight helped us hire a Director of Program Management rather than more coordinators. Ask yourself:
What skills already exist on your team but are underutilized?
Which team members are consistently overworked, and specifically what tasks are consuming their time?
What informal roles have team members taken on? These often reveal organizational needs that haven't been formally acknowledged.
Be honest about your own constraints: Helia often works with orgs that aren't ready to hire a full-time person - we're able to support a person or team as interim capacity - experienced folks who can jump in immediately and get things done without a long-term commitment or a lot of oversight (especially when things are developing - sometimes it's great to jump in and sometimes it's great to keep your options open - you'll know the difference AND trust yourself when it happens).
Ask the hard questions before you hire: I once hired a brilliant but junior operations associate because the salary fit our budget. By week three, I realized I didn't have time to provide the training and oversight they needed. Here are the questions I wish I'd asked myself:
What work truly needs doing, regardless of who does it?
What level of decision-making authority am I ready to give this role?
How do I know if I need a strategic thinker or a hands-on doer? (Or both?)
Am I hiring for where we are now, where we want to be in a year, or both?
Questions to ask yourself
What does your organization need at this moment versus six months from now?
Which is more important for this role: technical skills, management experience, or strategic thinking?
If this person succeeds wildly, what would be different in your organization after one year?
What kind of support can you realistically provide to this role?
Want to Try This?
Templates & Guides:
Walk through the steps in this article using our Creating the Right Role at the Right Level Worksheet.
Try out the Management Center’s Figuring out the Role Worksheet + Sample (The Management Center is a GREAT place to start for all things people)
Check out Helia’s Common Roles Reference Guide to see different role types (sales, ops, product, etc.) across levels
Recommended Reads:
Check out Deel’s blog post on creating a job leveling matrix and see Helia’s simple example HERE
Read THIS story by Jennifer Sloan on how a new team member implemented levels at her new company (it’s long - and there’s good stuff in here!)
Think about how roles might play together - HERE is a sample memo Helia wrote on a few different hiring strategies for a fast-growing organization after completing one of our Discovery 360s
Connections:
Have a person or org you recommend for help with role scoping and organizational development? Tell us about them!
This article comes from my own hard-won experience hiring (and occasionally mis-hiring) across organizations. I've learned the most from doing and from talking with other doers willing to share their wisdom. We share these stories in the Helia Library because we don't need to start from blank pages or do it all alone.
As always, take what's helpful, leave what's not, and make it your own.
