How to Hire a COO: The Job Description Founders Write, and the One They Should
Most COO job descriptions describe a very senior project manager. That's who applies, that's who gets hired, and that's why so many first COOs don't last. Here's the job description that describes an owner, and the five interview questions that find one.
A founder put a fair question to me recently. Hiring for potential over credentials works for most of the org chart, they said. But what about the one hire where I can't afford to be wrong?
The COO is that hire. So let's do it properly: the job description, the interview, and the mistake that sits underneath both.
The mistake underneath
Before the job description, one thing. If you haven't decided what the COO will own (which functions report to them, which numbers are theirs, which decisions they make without asking you), stop. Don't write the job description yet.
This is the most common reason first COO hires fail, and it usually has nothing to do with the person. The founder wants someone to own operations, hires someone strong, and then can't actually let go of anything. The new COO spends their first year fighting for authority they were promised on day one. Eventually they leave, and the founder decides they hired the wrong person.
The person wasn't wrong. The seat was empty of anything to own.
So the first line of the real job description isn't a line at all. It's a list, and you have to write it before you can write anything else: these functions, these numbers, these decisions. If you can't write that list, you don't need a COO yet. You probably need a Chief of Staff, and I've written about that difference separately.
The job description founders write
Here, lightly disguised, is the one I see most:
We're looking for a Chief Operating Officer to partner with the CEO on scaling the business. You'll drive operational excellence across the organization, build and optimize processes, lead cross-functional initiatives, and ensure alignment between teams. The ideal candidate has 10+ years of operations leadership, experience scaling a company from Series A to Series C, an MBA, and a track record of building high-performing teams. Strong communicator. Data-driven. Comfortable with ambiguity.
Read it back and count the things this person owns. None. They partner, drive, build, lead, and ensure. Those are verbs for someone who works alongside the owner. This is a job description for a very senior Chief of Staff, or a very senior project manager, written in the vocabulary of an executive.
That's who applies. Worse, that's who gets hired, because the founder interviewing against this description is looking for someone who sounds like an excellent partner, and excellent partners are easy to find and easy to like.
Also notice the credential wall: ten years, Series A to C, MBA. That filter selects for someone who has done this exact job at a company that looked like yours two years ago. It screens out the operator who built a function from nothing at a company that looks like yours now.
The job description founders should write
Here's the version I'd write instead. Copy it, change the specifics, and notice how different a person it describes.
We're hiring a COO to own how the company operates. On day one, the following report to you: [functions, be specific: delivery, finance operations, people operations, customer support]. The following numbers are yours: [name them: gross margin, on-time delivery, hiring time-to-fill, whatever is true]. You make the following decisions without checking with the CEO: [name them: vendor selection under $X, hiring within budget, process changes inside your functions].
The company currently runs on [honest description: the founder's memory, a handful of people who know, three spreadsheets and Slack]. Your first 90 days are about replacing that with an operating cadence that works without the founder in the room. Your first year is about the functions above running well enough that the CEO can stop thinking about them.
We are also running [number] AI tools and agents across [functions]. Nobody currently owns their output. You will.
We're looking for someone who has built at least one function from nothing and run it long enough to fix what they got wrong. Stage-specific experience is useful and not required. What is required: you can describe, from your own history, a decision you made that the CEO disagreed with, and what happened.
Three things this version does that the first one doesn't.
It names what the person owns, which means the people who apply are people who want to own things. It describes the company honestly, which filters out candidates who need it to already be structured. And it replaces the credential wall with a single evidence requirement (built one, ran it, fixed it) that a strong operator without the pedigree can clear and a polished non-owner can't.
Five interview questions for the COO seat
These aren't general-purpose interview questions. They're built to find one thing: whether this person can hold authority. Take it, use it, and be accountable for what happens.
1. Tell me about a function you built from nothing. What did it look like at month one, month six, and month eighteen?
You're listening for whether they can describe the whole arc, including the part where the month-six version turned out to be wrong and had to be rebuilt. Anyone can describe the finished state. Owners describe the versions.
2. What's a decision you made that your CEO disagreed with? What happened?
If they've never had one, they've never held real authority. Every decision went through someone. If they had one and it went badly, ask what they did next. If they had one and won, ask how they kept the relationship. You need someone who has been in that room and is still employable.
3. What's the first thing you'd want to know about how we operate that I probably haven't told you?
This is the question that separates operators from executives. Operators ask about the close, the handoffs, who actually approves things, where the spreadsheet is. Executives ask about the vision. You want the person who asks where the spreadsheet is.
4. Walk me through a process you automated. What did you decide not to automate, and why?
The second half is the whole question. Anyone can automate. An operator knows that automating a broken process makes it break faster with less visibility, and can tell you where they drew the line. This is also where you find out whether they think of AI tools as things that make decisions (because they do) and whether they've thought about who is accountable for those decisions.
5. What would you need from me in the first 90 days that founders usually don't give?
The honest answer is some version of "decisions you've already made that you'll actually let stand." If they say "trust" or "support," push. If they say "I'll need you to stop attending the operations meeting by month three," hire them.
Side by side
| The Job Descriptions founders write | The Job Descriptions founders should write | |
|---|---|---|
| Verbs | Partner, drive, lead, ensure | Own, decide, run |
| What the person owns | Nothing named | Functions, numbers, decisions, listed |
| Describes the company as | "Scaling" | What it actually runs on today |
| Filter | 10+ years, Series A to C, MBA | Built one function from nothing, ran it, fixed it |
| Mentions AI | Not at all, or "AI-forward" | Names the tools and says nobody owns them yet |
| Who applies | Excellent partners | People who want to own things |
| First 90 days | Unspecified | Replace the founder's memory with a cadence |
| How it fails | Strong hire, nothing to own, gone in two years | Rarely, because the seat was defined before the search |
What to do if you can't write the list
If you got to "these functions, these numbers, these decisions" and couldn't fill it in, that's not a failure. It's information. It means the operation isn't structured enough yet for someone to own it, and hiring a full-time COO into that is the most expensive way to find out.
The alternative is to have the structure built first: by you, by a Chief of Staff, or by someone who does this fractionally and hands over a working operation with the list already written. Then you hire a COO with a real job description, into a real seat, and the first ninety days are about running something instead of finding it.
Either way, write the list before you write the job description. The person who shows up depends on it.
