Companies create new executive roles when the existing structure no longer supports the direction of the business. Growth, ownership changes, or expansion into new markets add complexity that makes it necessary to assign clear accountability to an area that was previously handled informally or shared across the leadership team.
Unlike replacement searches, where there is at least some institutional memory of what success looks like, newly created roles start from zero. There is no benchmark. Often, there is not even alignment among stakeholders on what the role is meant to achieve.
The time spent defining those outcomes directly affects the quality of the hire.
Rachel Quinn sums up this challenge: “If you can’t describe what this person needs to achieve in the first year, you’re not ready to go to market. The title is secondary. The key outcomes are what matter.”
If you can’t describe what this person needs to achieve in the first year, you’re not ready to go to market. The title is secondary. The key outcomes are what matter.
Start with the Business Need
A common failure point in hiring is starting with a title rather than a business problem. Research in Harvard Business Review highlights that vague role definitions are a major contributor to hiring failure, particularly at senior levels (Fernández-Aráoz, Groysberg & Nohria, 2009).
The more effective approach is to begin with a clear articulation of what must change in the business over the next 12 to 24 months. Whether that is scaling operations, improving margins, integrating acquisitions, or building leadership capability, the role should be designed around outcomes rather than responsibilities.
Behavioral-based hiring frameworks emphasize linking role design to measurable business outcomes rather than personality traits or generic competencies. Studies by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and Harvard Business Review indicate that setting behavioral expectations and defining performance milestones upfront reduces early attrition significantly.
Two companies might both be hiring a “Chief Operating Officer,” yet their needs could differ dramatically depending on their stage of growth, capital structure, and operating model. One may require a process optimizer; another, a builder of new markets. Defining the desired business outcomes, i.e. scale, integration, transformation, or stabilization, determines the archetype needed. Without this clarity, businesses tend to over-specify roles in an attempt to hedge risk, which paradoxically reduces the quality of the candidate pool.
As Quinn notes, “A lot of first-time job specs try to cover every base. That often leads to unnecessary debate and a narrower candidate pool. Decide what really needs to move in the next year and build the role around that.”
Clarity at this stage makes later decisions on trade-offs easier to discuss and agree on.
Align on What Success Looks Like
Before launching the search, leadership should agree on what success means in tangible terms. This usually involves three to five clear outcomes defining what a strong first year would look like.
McKinsey research on leadership transitions links successful moves into new roles with clear expectations, focused priorities, and explicit success metrics for the leader and their team. Defining those success statements upfront creates alignment during stakeholder interviews and prevents the “moving target” problem where definitions of success shift mid‑search.
Trade-offs must also be negotiated early. Is deep industry expertise essential, or is there value in bringing a cross-sector perspective? Should the individual be a tested operator or an ambitious second-in-command ready to step up?
“If different stakeholders are measuring success differently,” says Quinn, “the search loses momentum. You end up with shifting criteria and stalled decision-making.”
Behavioral-Based Hiring: Predicting Performance Through Evidence
Once outcomes are defined, the next challenge is assessing whether a candidate can deliver them. This is where behavioral-based hiring becomes critical.
Behavioral interviewing is grounded in a simple but well-validated principle: past behavior is the best predictor of future performance (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). Structured behavioral interviews, which focus on specific examples of how candidates have handled relevant situations, have been shown to significantly outperform unstructured interviews in predicting job success.
Key elements of behavioral-based hiring include:
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Focusing on specific, real past experiences rather than hypothetical responses
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Evaluating context, including constraints, resources, and scale
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Assessing decision-making, not just outcomes
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Probing for consistency across multiple examples
In the context of newly created roles, this is especially important. Titles and pedigree become unreliable signals. What matters is whether the candidate has operated in comparable environments and demonstrated the ability to build, scale, or transform.
Translate Outcomes into Evaluation Criteria
Once outcomes are agreed upon, they need to be translated into criteria that can be evaluated.
General ambitions such as “professionalize the function” or “drive growth” need to be broken down into capabilities and experiences. What has this person done before that demonstrates they can deliver the outcomes required here? In what context did they do it? With what level of resources and authority?
Research led by David Ulrich and the Center for Effective Organizations emphasizes evaluating what candidates have done rather than what they say they would do. This involves exploring preceding contexts (organizational stage, resource levels, cultural factors) to test whether candidates truly led or merely supported achievements.
For example:
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What has the candidate built from scratch versus inherited?
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What level of complexity have they managed?
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How have they prioritized under resource constraints?
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What trade-offs have they made, and why?
This aligns with industrial-organizational psychology research, which emphasizes the importance of clearly defined competencies and structured evaluation frameworks in improving hiring accuracy (Campion, Palmer & Campion, 1997).
It is also necessary to distinguish between capabilities that must be present on day one and those that can be developed. Over-specifying the role can narrow the field unnecessarily and exclude capable candidates.
As Quinn puts it, “Be clear about what is genuinely essential. If you treat everything as non-negotiable, you won’t make progress.”
Assess Context and Judgement
In newly created roles, titles alone are not reliable indicators. A candidate may have held a similar title in a more mature company with established systems and more resources.
Job titles can mask significant differences in scope and challenge. A “CFO” in a $150 million family enterprise doesn’t do the same work as one in a listed global company. Assessment should focus on how the candidate operates in context. Have they worked through comparable stages of growth or change? Have they built capability rather than simply maintained it? How do they prioritize when resources are limited?
Structured case studies can help. Presenting a live business issue and asking the candidate how they would approach it provides insight into critical thinking, prioritization, and judgment.
Structured case studies or scenario interviews, widely recommended in behavioral hiring models (e.g., the STAR technique), can reveal this. Asking candidates to respond to a live business problem helps assess not just experience, but insight, reasoning, and adaptability.
“We’ll often ask candidates to think through a real business issue the company is facing,” says Quinn. “We’re looking for practical reasoning rather than theory.”
This aligns with research on situational judgement tests and work sample assessments, which are among the most predictive hiring methods available (Schmidt et al., 2016).
The Role of an Experienced Search Partner
For newly created roles, experience and process discipline matter more than access to a wide network. A strategic search partner helps test assumptions, benchmark against peers, and turn ambitions into defined hiring criteria.
An experienced search partner can bring insight into how comparable companies have approached similar hires. They can also challenge assumptions that may limit the search unnecessarily or create unrealistic expectations.
Quinn describes 3P’s approach:
“We focus on getting the brief right before we begin reaching out to candidates. If the thinking isn’t clear at the start, the search becomes harder than it needs to be.”
Clarity on what success means (and how it will be measured) enables better hiring decisions and a stronger foundation for long-term leadership success.
Conclusion
Every first-time hire is an act of organizational design. Defining success is not a formality. It is the foundation of the entire process.
That definition should include agreed first-year outcomes, explicit trade-offs, a realistic understanding of the operating environment, and objective evaluation criteria. Businesses that invest the time to define what success looks like consistently outperform those that rush to market with incomplete thinking. Behavioral-based hiring provides the methodology. Clear role definition provides the direction.
If you are considering a first-time executive hire or struggling to define what success should look like, it is worth getting the brief right before going to market.
3P Partners works with leadership teams to clarify role design, align stakeholders, and build structured hiring processes that lead to better decisions.
Reach out to start a conversation about how to approach your next critical hire with greater clarity and confidence.
Sources:
- 3P Partners. (2024). Structuring an objective interview process.
- Campion, M. A., Palmer, D. K., & Campion, J. E. (1997). Structured interviewing.
- Center for Effective Organizations (USC), Ulrich, D., et al. Research on executive role definition and competency modelling.
- Fernández-Aráoz, C., Groysberg, B., & Nohria, N. (2009). The definitive guide to recruiting in good times and bad.
- McKinsey & Company. (2017). Successfully transitioning to new leadership roles.
- MIT Career Advising & Professional Development. Using the STAR method for your next behavioral interview.
- Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology.
- Schmidt, F. L., et al. (2016). Selection methods and job performance meta-analysis.
- Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). (2024). Beyond skills: How behavior‑based hiring can transform your workforce. SHRM Labs.