Hi Reader,

You make your first People hire at 40 people. You give them a VP title, because you want a strong candidate to say yes. Eighteen months later you’re at 200 people, opening a second market, and you need a CHRO. Now you have to tell a loyal, hard-working person that the top job is going to someone else.

That conversation usually starts at the moment of the first hire, long before anyone thinks about the CHRO.

Hire for the Stage

In the latest Built by People Leaders episode, I talk with Tom Hunter, founder of Story Recruitment, which places first finance hires and first CFOs in high-growth tech, fintech and deep tech companies. He works in finance, but the pattern carries straight over to People roles.

The approach has three moves.

Hire one level below the top job. Your first People hire should be a generalist who can do many things well and fast: hiring, onboarding, the first policies, the daily people questions. The specialist CHRO comes later, when the business needs strategy more than structure. Finance works the same way, with a financial controller first and a CFO somewhere around Series B or C.

Screen for how they handle not knowing. Technical skills are table stakes, and most good candidates have them. At an early stage, what separates people is whether they can work in a mess: imperfect data, no process, priorities that change every week. Ask about a problem they had no playbook for, and listen for “I didn’t know, so I went and found out.”

Keep the title honest. A VP title on a first hire reads as a promise of the C-level role. If you’re not sure the person will grow into it, don’t make the promise. Then, when the business needs strategic input, the senior hire lands in a clear gap between operations and strategy, and it feels natural to everyone.

Why it works

Two reasons.

First, people and businesses grow at different speeds. A company can triple in a year, but no one triples their experience in a year. A CTO in a three-person startup and a CTO in a 100-person scale-up are doing two different jobs. Planning your hires around that gap is more honest than hoping someone outgrows it.

Second, it takes the surprise out of the hard conversation. When titles match the job and development check-ins are clear, people know where they stand long before a senior hire is announced.

One line worth keeping

“Very rarely does an individual scale with a business in the same role… because people don’t grow at the same rate as a business.”

Continue the conversation

The full episode goes further. It covers the time test for when a founder should make their first People or finance hire (Tom’s threshold is 20% of the week), how fractional CFOs and CHROs give early-stage companies strategy without a full-time salary, and why 100 to 150 people is the point of no return for culture. You can listen on your favorite platform.

Listen to the full episode on your favourite platform.