15-20 hrs
Per week the founder spends on operations work that isn't theirs. Client escalations, vendor management, process fixes, team coordination. Every hour spent here is an hour not spent on growth.
Every decision still routes through you. That is the job you hired someone else to do.
You cannot tell from a resume whether someone will thrive in a 15-person agency where the approval process is "just do it and tell me after." You can tell when they solve your real operational problems before you sign an offer letter. That is what we show you.
You (Still)
- Clients
- Projects
- Team
- Finance
- Vendors
A bad operations hire doesn't just underperform. They stall your entire agency.
3-4 people
On your team who are quietly picking up the operational work nobody owns. Your best account manager is triaging problems instead of managing clients. They won't say anything. They'll just leave.
The usual job post describes an operations manager using organizational skills and years of experience. Neither predicts whether someone can walk into a 15-person agency and create order without waiting for instructions.
Your Saturday disappeared into the work your operations manager was supposed to own.
Your best people are picking up the pieces.
You have tried solving this before.
The Fortune 500 hire
Organized, professional, strong references. Three months in, you asked "Who handles procurement?" and the answer was "You do, along with HR, facilities, and vendor management." Their face told the story. They couldn't function without a 15-person support team.
The agency-side hire
Came from an 80-person agency with dedicated department heads. Expected approval workflows that nobody would give. Needed detailed instructions for every task. Your agency operates on ambiguity, and they needed certainty to function. Gone in four months.
The promoted coordinator
Great with tasks. Reliable. Your team loved them. But when you needed someone to redesign the onboarding process, they waited for you to tell them what to do. They were a coordinator who needed a manager, not a manager who could build systems.
Both hires were good at their jobs. Both had strong references. Both failed because the environment was different from anything on their resumes.
Resume says
- "10 years operations experience"
- "Managed team of 8"
- "Strong organizational skills"
Discovery reveals
- "Needs approval workflows to function"
- "Cannot handle ambiguity without support"
- "Waits for instructions instead of creating systems"
We start by understanding how your agency actually operates.
Before we search for a single candidate.
- 01
We learn how decisions get made, who handles escalations, what "autonomous" actually means in your agency. How fast does someone need to move? What does a Friday fire look like? Who currently owns the systems that are held together by habit?
- 02
We map what the seat demands and what keeps someone motivated in it. Not "5 years operations experience." The ability to walk into ambiguity, create structure from nothing, and push back on the founder when the founder is wrong.
- 03
Finalists can complete a paid Work Simulation using real operational challenges from your agency. You see their systems thinking, their prioritization instincts, and how they communicate under pressure before you meet them.
Ops Manager
- Systems
- Ambiguity
- Initiative
- Team Cohesion
- Relationships
- Pace
"You were asking me questions that I'd never had anyone ask me about. It kind of just blew me away."
Here is what discovery produces for an operations manager search.
Everything we build during discovery is yours to keep whether or not you proceed with the search.
Work Environment Scan
Before we write a job description, we record how the seat actually works. How fast do decisions need to happen? What does escalation look like? How much ambiguity does this person need to tolerate on a Tuesday afternoon?
What the seat demands
11 Functional
11 Social
10 Emotional
Right Person Profile
A behavioral map built from the Work Environment Scan. It defines who thrives running operations at your specific agency, who fails despite strong credentials, and the disengagement triggers that would make the right person leave.
Sample Work Drivers
Job Map
The complete blueprint for the operations manager role. Five core accountabilities, the responsibilities under each one, and the specific success metrics you will use to evaluate performance at week one, month three, and year one.
Sample structure
- Week 1
- Month 3
- Year 1
Salary Benchmark
Percentile-level market data from multiple independent sources. We show you exactly where your budget sits in the distribution and what that means for the operations managers you will attract. We charge flat fees, so we have zero incentive to inflate the number.
Agency Operations Manager (US, 2026)
- $65K
- $78K
- $95K
Then we go find them.
We source proactively across multiple channels, targeting operations professionals who match the behavioral profile we built in discovery. We are looking for fit, not filling a funnel.
Interviews reward people who are organized in interviews.
Work Simulations reward people who can create order from chaos.
Every simulation is built from your agency's real challenges. Here is an example of what an operations manager candidate receives.
Work Simulation Brief
Operations Manager
Scenario
A 15-person training agency growing 30% year over year. Client onboarding currently takes three weeks and should take five days. Three team members routinely miss project deadlines. The founder handles all client escalations directly. No one on the team has defined roles beyond their job titles.
What you receive
- Current onboarding process map with bottlenecks highlighted
- Team structure with actual (not official) responsibility breakdown
- List of recurring client escalation types from the past 90 days
- Founder's priorities and the constraints they operate under
What you produce
- Root cause analysis of the three highest-impact operational breakdowns
- Redesigned onboarding process with target timeline and owner for each step
- 90-day operations plan with quick wins in week one and systems changes by month three
- Escalation framework that removes the founder from routine decisions
What we evaluate
- 01
How they diagnose the problem. Do they see the system failure or just the symptoms?
- 02
How they prioritize. Do they fix the loudest problem or the one with the most downstream impact?
- 03
How they plan the first week. Do they observe, or do they start building systems immediately?
- 04
How they handle the founder relationship. Do they remove the founder from decisions or create new dependency?
The 2026 Operations Manager Hiring Benchmark
What the market looks like right now.
Agency Operations Manager Salary Range (US)
- $65KP25
- $78KMedian
- $95KP75
Base salary. Aggregated from Glassdoor, Salary.com, Robert Half, ZipRecruiter, SalaryGuide.com, and Hiry.
What the best agency operations managers care about
- 01Autonomy and Ownership
- 02Systems Impact
- 03Variety and Challenge
You stop being the safety net for every role in the building.
The operations manager introduces structured meetings and sorted the systems held together by habit. You stop triaging problems and start thinking about growth.
A client calls with an escalation and your ops manager handles it. They resolve the issue, communicate the outcome, and the client never needs to talk to you.
Your Saturday mornings are yours again. Not because you decided to stop working, but because someone else is capable of owning the work.
"I finally feel excited about the future of my business. And that hasn't happened in a very long time."
1 week
of business discovery before we search for a single candidate.
120 days
120-day replacement-search guarantee
A 120-day replacement-search guarantee is included, subject to the conditions in your service agreement. We'll explain those conditions before you commit.
Common questions about hiring an operations manager
How do you tell the difference between a good ops manager and a good-on-paper ops manager?
Most ops managers look identical on a resume. The difference shows up in how they handle ambiguity, whether they wait for instructions or create structure on their own, and how they respond when five things break at once. We test this directly with a paid Work Simulation built from your agency's real operational challenges. You see their systems thinking, prioritization instincts, and communication style before you make an offer.
My last ops manager came from a large company and failed. Can you prevent that?
This is the most common failure pattern we see. Someone with strong credentials from a 200-person company with dedicated HR, procurement, and facilities teams cannot function in a 15-person agency where the ops manager IS all of those functions. Our discovery phase maps exactly what your environment demands, and our Work Simulation tests candidates in that environment, not in the one they came from.
How long does it take to fill an operations manager role?
Our planning estimate is about 5.8 weeks from sourcing to an accepted offer. It is an estimate, not a measured average. The real pace depends on the role, the market, and how quickly your team decides. Business discovery comes first, about a week before sourcing. During it, we learn how your agency actually operates, how decisions get made, and what autonomous means in your environment. Then we headhunt and send you a shortlist to review. If you include a paid Work Simulation, finalists complete it next. Then you interview, and we support the decision and offer. Notice periods sit outside the estimate.
What does $7,500 include?
Everything from discovery to guarantee. We map how the seat actually works, build the Right Person Profile, source across multiple channels, run paid Work Simulations with real operational scenarios from your agency where they help the decision, evaluate candidates with documented trade-off analysis, support you through the offer, and back it with a 120-day guarantee. No percentage of salary. Same price whether the role pays $60K or $200K.
What if the hire doesn't work out?
Every completed placement carries a 120-day replacement guarantee. It's subject to the conditions in your service agreement. We'll explain those conditions before you commit. The period starts on the first day of employment.
How much of my time does this actually take?
About three hours of structured time with SuperHired, plus your finalist interviews and decision time. You approve the role, pay, shortlist, and offer. We handle the work between.
A standard search is $7,500 flat.
The same methodology, the same discovery, and the same 120-day guarantee whether the operations manager manages a 10-person team or a 50-person agency.
120-day guarantee Every completed placement carries a 120-day replacement guarantee. It's subject to the conditions in your service agreement. We'll explain those conditions before you commit.
Prefer a Scoping Call? We listen to your situation and tell you how we'd approach it.