The chief of staff search is where household staffing gets genuinely complicated, because the role is both harder to define and harder to fill than almost any other position a family hires for. Families who know they need one often struggle to articulate precisely what they need beyond a general sense that the household’s operational and administrative complexity has outgrown what a house manager or personal assistant can handle. Getting specific about what the position actually requires before starting the search is what separates a successful hire from a frustrating one.
What the Role Actually Solves
A chief of staff for a private household is hired when the principal’s life, not just the household, has become too complex to manage without dedicated senior-level support across multiple domains. This is distinct from a house manager, who is primarily managing the household’s physical operations and staff. It’s distinct from a personal assistant, who supports the principal’s schedule and communications. A chief of staff integrates across those functions and typically extends into areas that neither of those roles covers: managing multiple properties, coordinating between the household and the principal’s professional operations, overseeing a team of other household staff and service providers, and handling the kind of high-stakes, judgment-intensive work that requires someone who can operate with genuine authority on the principal’s behalf.
Families who hire a chief of staff when what they need is a house manager, or who hire a house manager when what they need is a chief of staff, end up with a mismatch that surfaces quickly. The chief of staff candidate who accepts what turns out to be primarily a household management role is underutilized and often leaves. The house manager who is placed in a chief of staff role and asked to do work outside her professional depth produces outcomes below what the role required. Getting this distinction right before the search begins is the most important thing a family can do.
Who the Right Candidate Actually Is
Chiefs of staff in private households come from a range of professional backgrounds, and the right background depends on what the specific role demands. Some of the strongest candidates have prior estate management experience and have developed the professional scope and strategic thinking that the step up to chief of staff requires. Others come from corporate chief of staff or senior operations roles where they’ve managed complex organizations and are transitioning to private service. Some have served in senior personal assistant roles for demanding principals over many years and have grown into the full scope of what the chief of staff position involves.
What all of these candidates share is a specific combination of high-level organizational capability, sound judgment in complex situations, discretion at an absolute professional standard, and the personal authority to act on the principal’s behalf with other staff, vendors, and professionals. This last quality is harder to assess in an interview than technical competence, but it’s often the thing that determines whether the hire actually works. A chief of staff who doesn’t command genuine professional respect from the people she’s coordinating can’t do the job regardless of how capable she is individually.
Why the Search Takes Time
Families who start a chief of staff search expecting to hire within four to six weeks are consistently surprised. Qualified candidates for senior private household positions are not abundant, they’re not actively posting their availability on job boards, and they’re not going to accept positions that aren’t clearly defined and appropriately compensated. The search that moves at the pace the right candidate requires is a search that takes three to five months, sometimes longer for particularly complex roles or demanding markets.
The compensation question is one families need to resolve before the search begins rather than during it. Chiefs of staff for significant private households are senior professionals commanding salaries that reflect that seniority, plus the benefits package the position warrants. Families who enter the search with a budget calibrated for a house manager are not going to attract chiefs of staff, and discovering this mid-search adds months to a process that was already going to take time.
At Seaside Staffing Company, the chief of staff search starts with a detailed conversation about what the role actually needs to accomplish, because the quality of that definition is what everything else in the search depends on.
