A Worksheet for Hiring a Studio's Operations Director

Some studios need an operations director who's deeply involved in individual project delivery, coordinating consultants and schedules; others need someone focused purely on the business side, staffing, finance, and studio culture, while principals stay closer to the design work. Write down which one your studio actually needs, since the two profiles attract different kinds of candidates on either platform.

A project-embedded operations lead benefits from Hunt Club's referral model, since a peer reference can speak directly to how someone performs under real project pressure. A business-focused operations hire, especially if the need is initially narrow, like fixing a billing process, can be a good fit for a fractional engagement through Bolster.

A studio's revenue often lags the work by months, since fees are frequently billed against project phases rather than steady monthly output, and an operations leader needs to be comfortable managing cash flow that doesn't arrive in a predictable rhythm. Ask every candidate, on either platform, to describe how they've managed a business through an uneven revenue pattern, not just how they've run day-to-day operations.

A candidate whose only experience is with steady, subscription-style revenue may struggle with the planning discipline a project-based studio actually requires.

SHRM's 2025 benchmarking figures are a useful starting point: $5,475 for the average nonexecutive hire, climbing to $35,879 for an executive hire once agency fees, postings, and internal recruiting hours are all added in¹. A retained Hunt Club search for a permanent operations director will track toward that executive number; a fractional engagement through Bolster runs as a smaller, ongoing rate instead.

If the search is actually for the studio's finance lead rather than a generalist operations director, BLS's May 2025 wage data is the better reference: a median of $83,680 nationally for accountants and auditors, with the top quartile reaching $109,810². A finance lead who understands percentage-of-completion billing on architecture projects typically commands toward the higher end of that range.

SHRM's 2025 data put the median time-to-fill for a nonexecutive role at 44 days from requisition to offer accepted, with executive searches often running longer³. Build that timeline into your project staffing plan explicitly, since an unfilled operations gap during an active project push is a different kind of risk than it would be during a quieter stretch.

Test for how a candidate has handled a project that ran over budget or fell behind schedule, since that scenario will recur and it's a better predictor of fit than a generic discussion of management philosophy. Ask them to walk through what they changed afterward, not just what went wrong.

Also ask specifically how they'd structure staffing across multiple concurrent projects with different fee arrangements, since that juggling act is close to the core of the job regardless of whether the hire came through Hunt Club or Bolster.

Multi-principal studios can let a leadership search stall without a clear owner, especially when every principal wants input on a hire who will touch every active project. Name one principal as the decision owner before the search begins, with authority to move things forward within agreed criteria, so a strong candidate doesn't lose interest waiting on a full-partner sign-off.

Whoever fills this seat needs a realistic picture of every active and upcoming project within their first few weeks, including which ones are running behind and which fee arrangements are unusual, rather than piecing it together informally over months. Build a structured handoff document before the search even starts: a simple list of active projects, their phase, their billing structure, and any known risks.

That document does double duty. It speeds up onboarding for whoever you hire, and putting it together often surfaces gaps in your own project tracking that are worth fixing regardless of who ends up in the role, well before a new leader ever has to ask an awkward question about a project nobody had fully documented.

Before you post the role, confirm each item:

• Write down whether the role manages individual projects or the business side of the studio, so the search targets the right profile.
• Ask each candidate how they managed cash flow through a slow billing stretch when fees arrive against project phases.
• Ask how they handled a project that ran over budget or fell behind schedule, and what they changed afterward.
• Name one principal as the decision owner before the search starts, with authority to move it forward within agreed criteria.
• Prepare a structured handoff document covering active and upcoming projects and unusual fee arrangements, so the new hire learns the pipeline within weeks.