Suppose you are about the recruit chief of staff, what would the ideal candidate be like?

We’re hiring a chief of staff to bring some order to the mayhem of our firm’s growth. You will touch everything at the company, from finance to sales, marketing to operations, recruiting to human resources, accounting to investor relations. You will report directly to the CEO.

Here’s what you’re going to be asked to do across a range of functional areas in the first ninety days, before your job evolves into a whole new set of responsibilities:

Marketing.

Leverage our existing customer base using best-in-class direct marketing campaigns via e-mail, phone, Web, and print or mail communications.

Convert our current customer spreadsheet and database into a highly functional, lean customer relationship management (CRM) system—we need to build the infrastructure to service and reach out to customers for multiple users.

Be great at customer service personally—excelling in person and on the phone, and you will help us build a Ninja certification system for our employees and partners to be like you.

Build our Web-enabled direct sales force, requiring a lot of strategic work, sales-force incentive design and experimentation, and rollout of Web features to support the direct channel.

Sales.

Be great at demonstrating our product in the showroom, as well as at your residence and in the field—plan to be one of the top sales reps on the team (and earn incremental variable compensation for your efforts).

Finance and Accounting.

Build our financial and accounting structures and processes, take over QuickBooks, manage our team of accountants, hire additional resources as needed, and get that profit and loss statement (P&L) rocking.

Figure out when we should pay our bills and manage team members to get things paid on time and manage our working capital effectively.

Track our actual revenues and expenses against your own projection—you will be building and running our financial model.

Operations.

We are building leading-edge capabilities on returns, exchanges, and shipping—you will help guide strategic thinking on operational solutions and will implement them with our operations manager.

We are looking for new headquarters, you may help identify, build out, and launch.

HR and Recruiting.

We are recruiting a team of interns—you will take the lead on the program, and many or all of them will report to you; you will be an ombudsman of sorts for our summer program.

The company has a host of HR needs that are currently handled by the CEO and third parties; you will take over many of these.

Production and Product Development.

The company is actively recruiting a production assistant/manager—in the meanwhile, there are a number of Web-facing and vendor-facing activities you will pitch in on.

The Ideal Candidate Is…

A few years out of college but is at least two or three years away from going to business or other graduate school.

Charismatic and is instantly likeable to a wide variety of people, driven by sparkling wit, a high degree of extraversion, and a balanced mix of self-confidence and humility.

able to read people quickly and knows how to treat people accordingly.

Naturally compassionate and demonstrates strong empathy, easily thinking of the world from the perspective of another person.

An active listener and leaves people with the sense that they are well heard.

Exceptionally detail-oriented and has a memory like a steel trap—nothing falls through the cracks.

Razor sharp analytically, aced the math section of their SAT test, and excels at analyzing and solving problems.

A perfectionist and keeps things in order with ease.

Erdogan, Berrin, Bauer, Talya, , and Mason Carpenter. Principles of Management. 1969 . Flat World Knowledge. 22 Jan, 2010. .