The most common mistake is hiring for the channel rather than for the judgement. A business that has grown through paid search hires a paid search leader. One with a struggling shop hires a merchandiser. It feels prudent and it usually solves last year's problem.
Deep expertise in one channel is the easiest thing to buy in this market, and rarely what the role needs in its first year. What it needs is someone who can read a commercial picture, decide what to stop, and carry a number in front of a board without flinching.
What the job is on a bad week
Worth designing the role around this rather than around the good weeks. On a bad week the job is telling a founder that the channel they are proud of is unprofitable, telling a team that two of their five projects are being cancelled, and then keeping both groups working.
That is a temperament question more than a skills question, and it is very hard to assess from a CV.
Deep expertise in one channel is the easiest thing to buy, and rarely what the role needs in year one.
Questions that reveal something
- Tell me about something you shut down. What did it cost you internally?
- Describe a number you were wrong about, and how you found out.
- What did you inherit that you decided to leave alone, and why?
- Where does your judgement come from in an area you are not expert in?
The third question is the most underrated. Leaders who change everything are easy to spot and often expensive. Leaders who can identify what is already working and protect it from their own instinct to improve it are rarer and considerably more valuable.
If you do not yet know what good looks like
This is common and there is no shame in it, particularly if the role is new. The honest position is that you are trying to hire permanently for a job you cannot yet specify.
Running the seat on an interim basis first is a cheaper way to find out. You get the work done, you learn what the role actually needs day to day, and you write a far better brief for the permanent search. The alternative is a permanent hire, a mismatch discovered in month five, and eighteen months lost.
One structural note
Decide before the search whether this role owns a number or advises on one. Both are legitimate. Advertising the first and delivering the second is how good people leave in year one, and it is entirely avoidable at the job description stage.