From the course: Become a Chief of Staff

Landing the chief of staff job

From the course: Become a Chief of Staff

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Landing the chief of staff job

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- So, just as there's no single definition for what a chief of staff does, there's no single route to landing the job either. In my experience, there's three paths. One is an active job search. On LinkedIn, there's over 19,000 active jobs posted for a chief of staff in the US. And so, leverage your network and find your path in to a company and apply and see how that works out. The second is to craft your current role into a chief of staff role. And so, what I mean by that is you may be close, in the terms of the responsibilities. If you're a program manager and you're already doing certain operational work or strategic initiatives, you may be able to elevate your title into a chief of staff role by working with your manager. And the third is to be hand selected by an executive at your company. I think, here, I would consider three things. One is to figure out who in the company you really admire and you want to work for and to reach out to them. Let them know what your career goals are. Let them know that you want to work with them. I think when you're talking to that executive about becoming their chief of staff, I would encourage you to press on whether or not they actually need one. In a lot of cases, I've seen an executive want a chief of staff because it sounds cool and it seems like the right thing for them to do, but when they take time to enumerate the responsibilities that they're looking for in a chief of staff, it turns out that there's others around their table who could do those projects and could pick up those responsibilities. And so, as you're considering that role, make sure you understand what that CEO or what that executive is looking for in a chief of staff. And maybe the time isn't right for them to hire a chief of staff, and so, the third thing is to be patient. If now is not the right time, at least you'll have planted that seed. And so, when the time is right, she'll be thinking about you, and your chances will be much higher, then, of landing that job.

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