[CDATA[ Fig 2: Orphan Functions — Evolution of functions w/o headcount I lead Bold indicates a new orphan I had to adopt. Use this CFO job description template to recruit a talented chief financial officer. Looks can be deceiving, though, because these roles aren’t weighted equally. Start by introducing your company. Not only have I held the role myself for four years at HoneyBook, but I also started Performance COO, a community for startup COOs in San Francisco. Find your next job near you & 1-Click Apply! Talk to a Talent Solutions sales specialist. Resource Library eBooks Job Descriptions Recruitment Templates Blog {{load.data.query.title}} {{load.data.query.content}} Search. //]]>. The CEO is typically an outward facing role, meeting with key investors, partners and other strategic advisors. I hope this helps to shine a light into the world of the chief operating officer. Most people understand that COOs support and collaborate with a startup’ It’s not surprising to see the typical COO managing operations and finance, but I wouldn’t have expected that more COOs manage Product than manage Sales. Our ideal candidate has extensive experience within the industry, perhaps having worked your way up through the ranks to your role as an executive. Luckily it’s my favorite part of the job. CTO (Chief Technology Officer) is an IT professional responsible for all technology systems, processes, software design and development within the company. But we can define ourselves broad lines: Over the past four years I have found this role to be impactful enough to do it myself every day. The low-stress way to find your next start up coo job opportunity is on SimplyHired. But wait, there’s more. We are looking for an experienced Chief Operating Officer or COOto oversee our organization’s ongoing operations and procedures. Use this Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) job description template to save time, attract qualified candidates and hire best employees. It’s not always the case that a startup needs to appoint a chief operating officer right out of the gate. Go ahead and set the bar high, because you’re more likely to get high-quality candidates that way. Your summary should provide an overview of your company and expectations for the position. You will be the company’s second-in-command and responsible for the efficiency of business. Partial Job Description 1) Provide strategic leadership to the company and direct the Executive Management team to establish long-range goals, strategies, plans and policies 2) Serve as strategic leader of the company 3) Provide leadership and management to ensure that the mission and core values of the company are put into practice The role of CEO is to work out the product market fit, the vision and strategic priorities of the business. Some of these items are truly episodic: after you move into an office and finish construction, being the resident “real estate person” takes all of 4 hours a year. A startup staffing company requires the expertise and experience of a COO (Chief Operating Officer). I pulled together data from startup COOs across the bay area to answer a question I frequently get about my own role: what does the chief operating officer at a startup really do? Self-assess to find your counterpart. While a CEO is concerned with long-term business goals, the COO is tasked with implementing daily operations, aligned with that goal and the company’s strategies. Executive roles impact profits, but rarely have the cross-functional skill-set to optimize business to work asynchronously to achieve optimal profit. (function(){var g=this,h=function(b,d){var a=b.split(". Collaborate with the CEO in setting and driving organizational vision, operational strategy, and hiring needs, Translate strategy into actionable goals for performance and growth helping to implement organization-wide goal setting, performance management, and annual operating planning, Oversee company operations and employee productivity, building a highly inclusive culture ensuring team members thrive and organizational outcomes are met, Ensure effective recruiting, onboarding, professional development, performance management, and retention, Adhere to company, federal, state, and local business requirements, enforcing compliance and taking action when necessary, Analyze internal operations and identify areas of process enhancement, Develop actionable business strategies and plans that ensure alignment with short-term and long-term objectives developed in tandem with the CEO, Directly oversee operations, HR, and accounting, and partner with the CEO on sales management to budget for sufficient investment capital to achieve growth targets over the near term, Aggressively manage capital investment and expenses to ensure the company achieves investor targets relative to growth and profitability, Monitor performance with tracking and establish corrective measures as needed, and prepare detailed reports, both current and forecasting, Maintain and build trusted relationships with key customers, clients, partners, and stakeholders, Bachelor’s degree in business administration, or related field, 5+ years experience in executive leadership positions, Leadership skills, with steadfast resolve and personal integrity, Understanding of advanced business planning and regulatory issues, A solid grasp of data analysis and performance metrics, Be able to diagnose problems quickly and have foresight into potential issues, Master’s degree in business or related field. ":"&")+"url="+encodeURIComponent(b)),f.setRequestHeader("Content-Type","application/x-www-form-urlencoded"),f.send(a))}}},s=function(){var b={},d=document.getElementsByTagName("IMG");if(0==d.length)return{};var a=d[0];if(! The average Chief Operating Officer salary in the United States is $446,150 as of December 28, 2020, but the range typically falls between $341,811 and $571,557. When do you need a COO? But, to my opinion, the CEO main role is to carry the vision and the COO duty is to design and implement the strategy that will fulfill that vision. These two focuses boil down to why all of this is important: COOs aren’t just managing a bunch of people and cranking away at work in their spare time. This sample job description is customizable for all online job boards. ), I do believe our simple tracking over the years creates a more relevant dataset than any I have seen for elucidating the roles COOs play in their respective companies. I’ve hosted nearly 50 COO meetings since I got started myself, and I know firsthand about the vast diversity among my peers. Growth or Change Is Coming. Think about your typical chief operating officer (COO): busy, driven to meet objectives, and practical to a tee. First Finding: Startup COOs are multifunctional leaders. I just read a terrific post from Ben Horowitz that he wrote a couple weeks back about the fallacy of Shared Command in companies. See salaries, compare reviews, easily apply, and get hired. However, there are a few indicators that now might be a good time for a startup to hire a COO. We have our eye out for a COO with strong leadership skills and the ability to approach business from a creative point of view. Wouldn’t it be fun to shake someone’s hand and predictably hear something like: “A wreck diver?? The chief operating officer of a company is second in command. I … Ultimately we hire people to scale it. Well, today I can tell you that when you’re the chief operating officer at a startup, everybody does have a question about your job. If you also have excellent people skills, busines… Crafting Job Descriptions: Chief Operating Officer (COO) At smaller advisory firms, including those that are just getting started, individuals often wear many hats, meaning they must take on multiple roles and responsibilities within a firm. In our data set, we’ve found that the average COO oversees over 4.4 distinct functions — and that number becomes much larger when you unpack our placeholder functions like “Operations” into its parts: HR, recruiting, administration, facilities, IT, etc. Coaches and develops the team to ensure they are delivering against key business metrics. On the surface it appears impossible to define the day job of this role when some of us are managing an engineering team while others handle analytics and HR. With your experience and talents, you’ll be able to lead our team of high-performing professionals to be efficient, productive, and effective. Answer talent questions with data-driven insights, Build company awareness to increase response rate, Invest in employees with learning opportunities. As such, your chief operating officer job description should be brief, high-level, specific, and realistic. Chief Operating Officer Job Responsibilities: Acts as a strategic partner on the leadership team and works closely with the team to ensure they are meeting performance expectations. Cheerleader. The role varies from company to company, some don’t have the role, and the jury is out on whether startups need one. It’s more like: It shouldn’t be a surprise: Harvard Business Review calls the COO role the most misunderstood job in the business world. Keep building your skills writing job descriptions. Fig 1: Evolution of functions with headcount I lead. Start by introducing your company. Building a sales team: mind the deadly chasm. CTO (Chief Technology Officer) job description: Intro Chief Technology Officer (CTO) job description should start … In our Performance COO community we have a lot of edge cases for membership where somebody introduces a new colleague and says “They don’t have a COO title — but they’re doing the same things we are!” Our next question is always the same: “How many functions do they manage?” In a very diverse world of titles and responsibilities, it’s this characteristic of being a multifunctional leader that brings us together. The Chief Operating Officer (COO) oversees the organization’s ongoing operations and procedures. I’ll try to clear up this mystery. Fig 3: Evolution of functions I do not manage. Then we map out a process. A Job Description gives both the employer and the employee a clear idea of the requirements of a certain Job. We almost universally manage a significant chunk of the company, We ensure that roles and tasks without headcount don’t fall through the cracks, We keep our CEOs focused and pointed in the right direction. When the company is small, we do the job ourselves. Not … As I’ve browsed the job descriptions, I’ve laughed at how unrealistic many of them are. Outline the types of activities and responsibilities required for the job so job seekers can determine if they are qualified, or if the job is a good fit. Here are the results. Given the exposure of uncertainty that startup has, it is good idea to keep the responsibilities defined around “what startups need”. ("naturalWidth"in a&&"naturalHeight"in a))return{};for(var c=0;a=d[c];++c){var e=a.getAttribute("pagespeed_url_hash");e&&(! Then, outline your expectations. The average salary for a Chief Operating Officer (COO) is $144,175. We’re looking for a COO with staffing or HR experience who has a desire to become instrumental in the development of a fledgling firm. Historically the CFO, COO, CEO, CMO, CSO or CRO all have accountability to profitability. Over the past three years we’ve assembled a group startup COOs who meet monthly to share and learn from each other. Chief Operating Officer Job Summary. Chart B: % of COOs in our community who manage each function. On the tail end, a handful of us even lead engineering. 7,659 open jobs for Chief operating officer. COO Job Description COO duties and responsibilities The traditional Chief Operating Officer is the member of executive management that is responsible for maintaining and driving operational results within a company. As a refresher, please re-read Lesson #14 on role of the startup CEO. I actually have a much simpler way of explaining what I do, and I would sum it up this way: taking things off my CEO’s plate, and figuring out how to thoughtfully scale the company. Once you’ve painted a picture of the work environment, clearly spell out the qualifications, duties, and objectives. If you’re building something from nothing, there will be times when things suck. As of July 1, LinkedIn will no longer support the Internet Explorer 11 browser. As such, your chief operating officer job description should be brief, high-level, specific, and realistic. I started HoneyBook as a team of one when we were very small, and in the beginning my world was filled with things like this: But within two months I needed to set out on the long journey away from the (deeply satisfying) world of individual contributions and scale the company by empowering tasks, processes, roles, and missions to other people. But I’ll start by sharing what I know the most: my own job. While these paint a picture about how much of my time was allocated over the past four years, it’s notable to mention that none of these diagrams match up to how I would describe my own role to others! Over the past three years, we actually tracked the individual functions a group of 30+ bay area COOs managed, and how these responsibilities changed over time. But it’s never about your adventures scaling headcount or driving down customer acquisition cost. Get free recruitment tips and resources delivered directly to your inbox. A Chief Operating Officer (COO) is a member of an organization's executive team. Join 1000's of recruiters who already have a head start. Read LinkedIn’s 7 Tips for an Irresistible Job Description. But taking a step back it’s easier to understand why this diversity exists: a COO is essentially managing around the skills of her boss, the CEO. Chart A: Average number of functions reporting to the startup COO, Second: There’s a lot of diversity in what COOs manage. In many cases, the COO is chosen specifically to complement the strengths and weaknesses of the CEO, or to work in tandem to bring the best leadership to the forefront. New start up coo careers are added daily on SimplyHired.com. It prompted me to consider what an employment ad might look like for a “startup ecommerce founder.” Here is a hypothetical job description I came up with. These roles and tasks appear on my plate whenever there is a need, but they also fall off when they eventually turn into people or whole teams. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but here are a few of these orphan functions and how they evolved over time. Over time a leader gets hired for what has now become a whole team, and the team rolls up to us because, well, who else would manage it? LinkedIn recommends the new browser from Microsoft. I believe we’re doing something else that makes a big difference in a growing company: we’re adding leverage to the right people, and we’re looking inward at how the company is scaling — — and fixing the leaks. Image: Shutterstock 1. You’ll have to maintain control of diverse business operations, so we expect you to be an experienced and efficient leader. I wish every networking event could start that way. Some real surprises surface when we look at what functions these COOs are leading; the data will break any stereotypes that exist. But not always. There are over 92 start up coo careers waiting for you to apply! 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