Hiring senior people for your £5m+ business

At £5m+, hiring stops being about job descriptions and job boards.

The hires that actually move the dial are senior — operations directors, finance directors, commercial directors, sales leaders. People on £80k to £150k who, if you pick them well, change the trajectory of the business for years. And if you pick them badly, set you back twelve to eighteen months minimum.

Most £5m+ owners I work with across Rotherham and the surrounding areas are still running their senior hiring process the way they ran it at £1m. Same job board, same one-stage interview, same gut-feel decision. Then they wonder why the senior person they hired is not delivering what they hoped.

Here is what actually works at this size.

Step 1: Get clear about the outcome, not the role

Before you write a job description, write the outcome.

What does this person need to deliver in their first twelve months for the hire to be a clear win? Not "improve operations". Specific. Measurable. With a date.

"By the end of month twelve, gross margin is up by three points and the operational headcount has not grown." That is an outcome. From it, you can derive what kind of person you actually need — and crucially, what kind of person you do not need.

Most senior hires fail because the owner hired against the role title, not the outcome. They got a competent person who does not happen to be wired to deliver what the business actually needs.

Step 2: Be honest about the brief

The £5m+ business you are running today is not the business someone joining the senior team is signing up for. You are hiring for the £8m or £10m business you are building.

Be honest in the brief. What works at £5m about your business? What is broken? What will this person walk into on day one — including the messy bits? What are the cultural non-negotiables?

If you sell a sanitised version of the business in the interview, the person joins, finds the real version, and is gone inside six months. If you tell them the truth, the ones who would not have stayed self-select out before you waste each other's time.

Step 3: Cast wider than your network

At £1m, you can hire from your network. At £5m+ for a senior role, your network is too small. You will keep hiring the same kind of person you have always hired, and the business will keep solving the same kind of problem.

Three sources worth using together:

A specialist recruiter who knows your sector. Not the generalist agency you have used for junior roles. A search firm with a real network at the level you are hiring. Yes, it costs 20-25% of first-year salary. Worth it for the access to passive candidates who are not on job boards.

Your own LinkedIn outreach. Specifically, your senior team's LinkedIn outreach. Senior candidates respond to other senior people, not to recruiter messages. Have your operations director reach out to people they respect in similar roles at similar businesses.

Targeted networking events. Trade body events, sector-specific roundtables, the conferences your target person actually attends. Pay to attend if you have to. Senior people meet new opportunities through conversations, not adverts.

Step 4: Interview for evidence, not impression

Most £5m+ owners interview senior people in one or two meetings. They make a decision based on chemistry, presentation, and a couple of standard questions. That is not enough information to commit £100k+ a year and the trajectory of a key function.

For a senior hire, expect five interactions minimum:

An initial conversation about fit and motivation. A detailed work-history conversation grounded in specific examples (use the STAR format — Situation, Task, Action, Result — and dig until you hit specifics). A working session where they actually do a piece of work you would expect them to do in the role — analyse a problem, build a plan, present a recommendation. A culture and team-fit conversation with the people they would work alongside. A reference round done by you, not HR — specifically with former bosses and former direct reports, not friendly colleagues.

If five interactions feels heavy, that is the point. The cost of a wrong senior hire is two years of trajectory and £200k of comp. Spending an extra ten hours getting it right is the obvious trade.

Step 5: Negotiate for the relationship, not the package

When you make an offer, do not just present the package. Present the relationship.

What does success look like for both of you in twelve months? What does the senior person need from you to deliver that — time, authority, decision rights, information access? What do you need from them — visibility, honesty, the ability to push back on you when they think you are wrong?

Senior people at this level have options. The ones worth hiring choose the role that gives them the relationship to succeed, not just the comp. If you cannot articulate that relationship in the offer conversation, you will lose to a competitor who can.

What this looks like in practice

Take Holistic Care 4 U — a care services business based in Rotherham, working across domiciliary, residential and training. When Taurai first came to me, the business had no real business plan and no working profit model. Busy day to day, but not building anything that compounded. Since we started working together, the business is back into profit, with a solid business plan and a clear methodology for growing margin. A real part of that shift was building a senior team that Taurai could trust to own outcomes — clear hiring decisions, clear positional contracts, and a leadership team that now runs the day-to-day operations without needing him to be the single point of decision-making.

“Working with Tim has been a game changer for our business. He has a real talent for cutting through the noise and helping us clearly identify what truly matters. What sets Tim apart is his ability to bring structure to our thinking—turning ideas into clear priorities and actionable plans. He doesn’t just advise; he challenges, guides, and holds us accountable to the standards we set. If you want a coach who will help you focus, think better, and actually execute, Tim is the one.” — Taurai Tongoona, Director, Holistic Care 4 U

One thing to do this week

Look at the senior people on your team right now. For each one, write down what specific outcome you hired them to deliver. Then write down what they are actually delivering today.

If there is a gap on more than one person, the problem is not the people. The problem is that you have been hiring against roles, not outcomes — and the muscle to fix that starts with the next hire.

Are you ready to hire senior people who actually change the business?

If this has prompted you to look at how you have been making senior hires, the next step is to get specific about which leadership disciplines are missing.

Step 1: Get your data. Take 7 minutes to score your leadership operating system. You will get an instant, personalised report on where the biggest gaps are between how you are leading and recruiting today and how a well-run £5m+ business should be doing it. Score your leadership →

Step 2: Let us talk. Book a 30-minute Discovery Call directly into my diary. We will look at your scorecard, talk through your next senior hire, and decide whether coaching can shorten the path to a better-built team. Book a discovery call →

Alternatively, if you are based in Rotherham or across South Yorkshire and want a quick chat first, call the office on 01709 242751 or email me at timcoleman@actioncoach.co.uk.