Chief of Staff Careers: Your Questions Answered

The Chief of Staff is one of the most talked-about career moves in business support and operations right now. It is also one of the least understood, which makes sense, because the path into it is anything but standard.

We speak with candidates about this role every week: experienced EAs and PAs wondering whether it is their natural next step, project managers and operators eyeing it from a different angle, and people who have simply seen the title appear more often and want to know what it actually involves. These are the questions we hear most, and our honest answers to them.

What does a Chief of Staff actually do?

A Chief of Staff is, at heart, a force multiplier for a leader. Where an Executive Assistant makes a leader’s day work, a Chief of Staff helps make a leader’s priorities work.

In practice that can mean owning cross-functional projects from start to finish, chairing meetings the principal cannot attend, acting as a trusted sounding board, and bringing order to the things that fall between departments. The specifics vary enormously from one business to the next, which is part of what makes it such an interesting role. What stays constant is the level you operate at: judgment, not just delivery.

What is the difference between a Chief of Staff and an Executive Assistant?

This is the question we are asked most, and it is an important one to understand if you are weighing up the move.

An EA is built around execution and support: protecting a leader’s time, anticipating needs, keeping the machine running. A Chief of Staff is built around priorities and decisions: owning projects, influencing across the leadership team, chasing down the things that would otherwise drift. One is not more valuable than the other; they are different disciplines, and in many businesses the two roles work side by side.

The shift, if you are making it, is from running a leader’s day to running a leader’s agenda.

Why are Chief of Staff roles so different from one another?

The definition of the role is unusually broad. “Chief of Staff” is less a fixed job description than a shape each business fills in its own way.

In one company the role leans heavily strategic, close to a junior partner to the CEO on the biggest decisions. In another it is operational, owning delivery and cross-functional projects. In a third it sits closer to a senior right-hand position with a strong business support core. All three are legitimately called Chief of Staff.

This matters more than it might first appear, because it shapes who each business will consider. A company that has scoped its Chief of Staff role as a strategy or operations hire may not look at a business support background at all, however strong the candidate. That is not a judgment on the individual. It is a reflection of how that particular business has defined the role. The practical takeaway is to read each brief carefully and target the versions of the role that genuinely fit where you have come from.

How do I become a Chief of Staff?

There is no single route in, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

Chiefs of Staff come from genuinely varied backgrounds. Some step up from a senior business support or EA role. Others move across from operations, strategy, management consulting, or project management. Plenty grow into it inside a business by steadily earning a leader’s trust. What unites almost everyone who makes it is not a particular CV line. It is a track record of taking ownership beyond their remit, sound judgment under pressure, and relationships built on trust.

If you want to move towards the role, start behaving like it before you hold the title: own a project end to end, get comfortable with ambiguity, and make yourself useful at the level of decisions, not just tasks.

Do I need a degree or a specific qualification?

No. There is no mandatory qualification for a Chief of Staff, and no single degree that opens the door.

An MBA or a strong commercial background can help in certain corporate settings, but plenty of excellent Chiefs of Staff have neither. Employers in this space hire for demonstrated capability and fit far more than for certificates. What you have actually done, and the trust you have earned doing it, matters more than what is framed on your wall.

I am an EA or a PA. Can I move into a Chief of Staff role?

Yes, and it is one of the most natural routes in for the right person, though it is not automatic, and it is worth being honest about that.

The step from EA to Chief of Staff is the step from supporting a leader’s day to owning a leader’s priorities. The skills overlap in discretion, organisation, and understanding how a leader thinks, though the role asks for more strategic ownership and the confidence to make the call yourself. The candidates who bridge it well tend to be the ones already stretching beyond their job description: leading projects, influencing decisions, being trusted with more than the brief.

The honest caveat, as above, is that not every Chief of Staff role is open to a business support background. Some are scoped firmly around strategy or operations, and those employers will look elsewhere regardless of how capable you are. That is not a reason to be discouraged. It is a reason to be selective, and to put your energy into the roles where your strengths are exactly what the business needs.

What skills do employers actually look for?

Trust is the through-line, and it is not something you can put on a CV. Beyond that, the qualities that come up again and again are sound judgment, discretion, the ability to influence without formal authority, comfort with ambiguity, strong communication, and the organisational instinct to drive things to completion.

Notice how few of those are technical. The Chief of Staff role is, more than most, about how you think and how you work with people.

How much does a Chief of Staff earn in the UK?

This is one of the hardest roles to put a single number on, because the title covers everything from a project lead in a scale-up to a near-peer of the CEO in a larger organisation. Pay tracks scope, sector, and seniority more than the title itself.

To give you a real sense of the range, over the last six months we have seen Chief of Staff roles starting around £65,000 to £70,000 and going far north of £150,000 at the senior end. That spread tells you everything about how broad the role is: two jobs carrying the same title can sit more than £80,000 apart, depending on what the business actually wants the person to own.

The most useful thing to know is that the range is wide, so it pays to understand exactly what a given role involves before judging the salary attached to it.

Is it just a stepping stone? What do Chiefs of Staff go on to do?

Often it is a stepping stone, and that is one of the best things about it.

The breadth of exposure a Chief of Staff gets, across strategy, operations, leadership, and decision-making, is hard to match anywhere else. It is why so many go on to become Chief Operating Officers, operations and people leaders, founders, or move into other senior roles. If you are ambitious, that is a feature, not a drawback. Few roles teach you how a business really runs as quickly.

How do I stand out when applying for a Chief of Staff role?

Show, do not tell. Specific examples of times you owned something beyond your remit, held genuine trust, or drove a project to a result will do far more than a list of responsibilities. Tailor your approach to the specific leader and business, because fit is everything in this role, and a generic application signals the opposite.

It is also worth investing in how you present yourself more broadly. The strongest candidates we work with have a clear, credible professional profile, not because it is fashionable, but because trust starts forming before the first interview.

Thinking about the move?

The Chief of Staff role is one of the most rewarding career steps available to ambitious business support and operations professionals, and one of the most individual. There is no single right way in, which can feel daunting, but it also means there is room for the route that fits you.