Your first senior hire, how to know whether it is the right one
The first hire above the owner's daily involvement is the most expensive appointment a growing business makes. Most of the risk is decided before anyone is interviewed.
Tommy Boyle, Founder, Business Answers · 4 November 2025 · 8 min read
The short answer
- Define the outcome the role owns before writing a job description. A role defined by tasks will be filled by someone who completes tasks.
- Decide whether you need someone to build something that does not exist or to run something that does. They are different people.
- Budget for the market rate. Underpaying a senior role is how owners end up doing the job themselves at greater cost.
- Set six month and twelve month measures in writing before the offer, and review them on schedule.
This is the appointment that changes the shape of a business, and the one owners most often get wrong. Not usually because they picked a poor candidate, but because nobody defined what the job was for.
Start with the outcome, not the duties
Write one sentence describing what will be true in twelve months if this hire works. Gross margin at a stated level. A pipeline that produces an agreed value of qualified work each quarter without the owner. Delivery running to schedule without escalation.
That sentence tells you what kind of person you are looking for and gives you something to review against later. A list of duties gives you neither.
Builder or operator
A builder creates a function that does not exist yet, sets up the process, and is comfortable with ambiguity. An operator takes an existing function and runs it better and more consistently. Most owners want both in one person, and then hire whoever interviews best.
If nothing exists yet, you need a builder, and you should expect to pay for judgement rather than for administration.
Pay the market rate or do not hire
A senior hire brought in ten or fifteen percent below market usually leaves within eighteen months or never had the standing to make decisions in the first place. Either way you pay twice, once in salary and once in the year you lose.
If the market rate genuinely does not fit the business yet, that is useful information. Fix pricing and margin first, then hire.
Write the review dates before the offer goes out
Two or three measures at six months and at twelve. Agreed with the candidate before they accept. Reviewed on the date, in writing, whether things are going well or badly.
Owners who do this deal with problems in month four. Owners who do not tend to spend a year hoping, and then make an expensive decision under pressure.
Count the full cost before you commit
Salary is the smallest part of the decision. Add employer PRSI, pension, a vehicle or expenses if the role needs them, recruitment cost, and the six months before the hire is contributing more than they consume. Then add the cost of the owner's time spent bringing them in properly, which is real even though it never appears anywhere.
Set that total against the margin the role is meant to protect or create. If the numbers only work on an optimistic view of next year, the hire is a bet rather than a plan, and it is worth pressure testing with somebody outside the business first.
Interview for judgement, not for enthusiasm
Ask for a decision they got wrong and what it cost. Ask how they set a price or a budget in their last role and who had to agree it. Ask what they inherited and what they changed in the first ninety days. Then ask what they would need from you in order to do this job well.
Candidates who have carried responsibility answer those questions in specifics. Candidates who have been near responsibility answer them in principles. The distinction is easy to hear and easy to talk yourself out of when you like somebody.
The first ninety days decide it
Give the role real authority in writing on day one, tell the team what the person now decides, and stop taking those decisions yourself. A senior hire whose decisions are routinely revisited by the owner is a senior hire in title only, and good people leave that situation quickly.
This is the point where most first senior hires are quietly undone, long before any review date. If you are about to make this appointment, it is the cheapest possible time to have someone challenge how you have defined it.
Talk it through
Talk your business through with Tommy Boyle
A free 30 minute call with Tommy Boyle. You bring the situation, he tells you what he would look at first and whether there is a piece of work worth doing. Nothing is sold to you on the call.
Or email tommy@businessanswers.ie
Questions owners ask
- When should I make my first senior hire?
- When there is an outcome the business needs that you cannot deliver alongside your own work, and when margin can carry the market salary for the role. Hiring senior people to relieve pressure without a defined outcome rarely works.
- Should I promote internally or hire externally?
- Promote where the function already exists and needs to be run consistently. Hire externally where the function needs to be built and nobody inside has done it before. Promoting a strong operator into a builder's role is a common and costly mistake.
- How do I know within six months whether the hire is working?
- By the measures you agreed before the offer. If those were never written down, look at whether decisions in that area still route back to you. If they do, the role has not taken hold.
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