How to hire an operations vice president

How to hire an operations vice president, step by step

Here's a step-by-step operations vice president hiring guide:

• Step 1: Identify your hiring needs
• Step 2: Create an ideal candidate profile
• Step 3: Make a budget
• Step 4: Write an operations vice president job description
• Step 5: Post your job
• Step 6: Interview candidates
• Step 7: Send a job offer and onboard your new operations vice president
• Step 8: Go through the hiring process checklist

What does an operations vice president do?

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1. Identify your hiring needs

   Before you start hiring an operations vice president, identify what type of worker you actually need. Certain positions might call for a full-time employee, while others can be done by a part-time worker or contractor.

   Determine employee vs contractor status

   Is the person you're thinking of hiring a US citizen or green card holder?

   Yes

   No

   Hiring the perfect operations vice president also involves considering the ideal background you'd like them to have. Depending on what industry or field they have experience in, they'll bring different skills to the job. It's also important to consider what levels of seniority and education the job requires and what kind of salary such a candidate would likely demand.

   Here's a comparison of operations vice president salaries for various roles:

   Type of Operations Vice President	Description	Hourly rate
   Operations Vice President	Top executives devise strategies and policies to ensure that an organization meets its goals. They plan, direct, and coordinate operational activities of companies and organizations.	$50-119
   President & Chief Operating Officer	A president/chief operating officer is responsible for monitoring the overall daily business operations and implementing corporate decisions for the company and its people's best interests. Presidents/chief operating officers regularly meet with the key executives and business partners to share corporate updates and strategize techniques to improve functions and increase the brand's image in the market... Show more	$54-187
   Director Of Business Operations	The position of a director of business operations involves the direction and coordination of an organization. It is the main responsibility of the directors of operations to oversee the profitability and overall growth of their organization... Show more	$32-87

   Show more

2. Create an ideal candidate profile

   Common skills:

   • Customer Service
   • Oversight
   • Project Management
   • Process Improvement
   • Human Resources
   • Continuous Improvement
   • Financial Statements
   • Risk Management
   • Strategic Plan
   • Logistics
   • Regulatory Compliance
   • Sigma
   • On-Time Delivery
   • Medicare

   Check all skills

   Responsibilities:

   • Manage business unit SLA's, define annual goals, operating plans and budgets.
   • Lead a team to use scrum and define, design, develop, and launch a new CRM platform.
   • Manage resource allocation and utilization, and communicate results via reporting dashboards and ROI analysis.
   • Finance and billing accountability across Medicaid, manage care commercial insurance, insurance verification, contract management, and benefits administration.
   • Create financial and sales reporting packages, implement CRM system and expand capabilities of ERP system by integrating additional modules.
   • Provide oversight of initiatives, consolidate customer value add services, regulatory compliance programs including quality management/document control and SOX.

   More operations vice president duties

3. Make a budget

   Including a salary range in your operations vice president job description is one of the best ways to attract top talent. An operations vice president can vary based on:

   • Location. For example, operations vice presidents' average salary in mississippi is 52% less than in washington.
   • Seniority. Entry-level operations vice presidents 57% less than senior-level operations vice presidents.
   • Certifications. An operations vice president with certifications usually earns a higher salary.
   • Company. Working for an established firm or a new start-up company can make a big difference in an operations vice president's salary.

   Average operations vice president salary

   $163,076yearly

   $78.40 hourly rate

   ---

   Entry-level operations vice president salary

   $106,000 yearly salary

   Updated January 9, 2026

   Average operations vice president salary by state

   Rank	State	Avg. salary	Hourly rate
   1	Washington	$214,499	$103
   2	Nebraska	$191,377	$92
   3	California	$189,703	$91
   4	Nevada	$185,413	$89
   5	Illinois	$182,223	$88
   6	Colorado	$179,530	$86
   7	District of Columbia	$175,412	$84
   8	Pennsylvania	$174,303	$84
   9	Michigan	$170,604	$82
   10	New Jersey	$169,820	$82
   11	Minnesota	$169,800	$82
   12	New York	$169,065	$81
   13	Massachusetts	$168,086	$81
   14	Texas	$165,410	$80
   15	Connecticut	$165,017	$79
   16	Utah	$162,513	$78
   17	Virginia	$162,466	$78
   18	Maryland	$158,883	$76
   19	Arizona	$154,010	$74
   20	Georgia	$151,007	$73

   Average operations vice president salary by company

   Company

   Rank	Company	Average salary	Hourly rate	Job openings
   1	Altar'd State	$216,022	$103.86	3
   2	RadioShack	$211,052	$101.47
   3	Community Health Systems	$208,862	$100.41	69
   4	Tanner Health System	$203,643	$97.91
   5	Goodwill Staffing Services	$200,343	$96.32
   6	Thumbtack	$200,070	$96.19	2
   7	Mohawk Valley Health System	$199,474	$95.90
   8	Associa	$197,304	$94.86
   9	Kaiser Permanente	$195,060	$93.78	66
   10	Citizens of Humanity	$194,348	$93.44
   11	Payscale	$192,713	$92.65
   12	Capital Metro	$192,293	$92.45	2
   13	House of Blues	$191,261	$91.95
   14	Transdev Services, Inc.	$190,610	$91.64	70
   15	UiPath	$190,362	$91.52	8
   16	Harris Health System	$189,742	$91.22
   17	HRA	$189,279	$91.00	1
   18	Connecticut Children's Medical Center	$188,721	$90.73	13
   19	Tumblr	$188,438	$90.60
   20	RideSTA	$187,998	$90.38

4. Writing an operations vice president job description

   A job description for an operations vice president role includes a summary of the job's main responsibilities, required skills, and preferred background experience. Including a salary range can also go a long way in attracting more candidates to apply, and showing the first name of the hiring manager can also make applicants more comfortable. As an example, here's an operations vice president job description:

   Operations vice president job description example

   Company Background:
   
   Genuine Parts Company ("GPC" or the "Company"), founded in 1928 and based in Atlanta, Georgia, is a leading distributor of automotive and industrial replacement parts and value-added services. The Company operates a global portfolio of businesses with more than 10,000 locations across the world. GPC has approximately 50,000 global employees. The Company has operations in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, France, the U.K., Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and China.
   
   Position Purpose :
   
   Seeking world-class talent to join the world's leading distributor of automotive and industrial replacement parts and value-added services operating 5,500+ locations and servicing more than 20,000 locations in the U.S and Canada. Specifically, this role will function as the head of infrastructure, networking, database platforms, technology operations, and lead the transformation to a site reliability engineering (SRE) operating model for GPC. Working with a highly talented product and engineering teams, she/he will play a leadership role to run platforms for the world's largest automotive and industrial replacement parts operations.
   
   This is an engineering leadership role with responsibility for driving the strategy and execution for GPC's infrastructure and operations modernization.
   
   This individual must be a technologist & engineer at heart and be comfortable in defining the technology direction and being hands on with the execution of the infrastructure and operations strategy. She/He must exhibit a deep understanding and experience with site reliability engineering; infrastructure and operations; agile delivery models; demonstrated focus on customer experience, and must have a proven track record of modernizing infrastructure and operations at scale.
   
   Close collaboration and alignment with a wide variety of both internal stakeholders and external vendors will be required. As such, exceptional abilities in building and maintaining strong working relationships and organizational savvy will be required. High level communication and presentation skills are required. Ability to attract, retain, and develop engineering talent will be critical.
   
   Responsibilities:
   Partnering with the cross-functional GPC team, develop the strategy for modernizing the infrastructure and operations, assemble the engineering talent, and lead the execution Establish a modern IT operations strategy and lead the transformation journey to a site reliability engineering model Overall accountability for - data center and cloud operations, database platforms, IT operations, and distributed network Responsible for simplifying the complexity of current infrastructure (data centers, stores, distribution centers, external and internal facing applications, and reducing the underlying technical debt Partner with peer leaders to accelerate and embed agile methodologies across the organization to increase customer-backed problem solving, to increase pace of IT operations, to accelerate innovation and to enhance cross-functional collaboration Plan and execute a multi-year strategy with multi-million dollar Capex/Opex budgets
   
   Location:
   GPC has two work locations to choose from, Duluth or Atlanta office. We offer a Flexible Work Policy that permits eligible employees to work remotely
   
   Desired Qualifications & Experiences:
   15+ years' experience in infrastructure, operations, cloud platforms, database engineering, network, & technology leadership (including 5+ years in site reliability engineering) Consistent track record of leadership, teamwork, and delivering high impact results Experience with operating large scale eCommerce platforms Experience with online marketplaces a plus Extensive experience with public cloud platforms (GCP strongly preferred) Experience managing 150+ FTE team of internal and extended delivery resources Experience leading leaders Ability to attract, motivate and retain world-class technology talent Strong fiscal prudence to maximize technology investments against critical business priorities across the enterprise Exceptional communication skills, team building and associate growth and development experience Degree in Computer Science or Engineering fields preferred
   
   GPC conducts its business without regard to sex, race, creed, color, religion, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, age, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, disability, military status, status as a veteran, or any other protected characteristic. GPC's policy is to recruit, hire, train, promote, assign, transfer and terminate employees based on their own ability, achievement, experience and conduct and other legitimate business reasons.

   Copy this example

   

5. Post your job

   To find operations vice presidents for your business, try out a few different recruiting strategies:

   • Consider internal talent. One of the most important talent pools for any company is its current employees.
   • Ask for referrals. Reach out to friends, family members, and your current work to ask if they know any operations vice presidents they would recommend.
   • Recruit at local colleges. Attend job fairs at local colleges to recruit entry-level operations vice presidents with the right educational background.
   • Social media platforms. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter have more than 3.5 billion users, and they're a great place for company branding and reaching potential job candidates.

   Post your job online:

   • Post your operations vice president job on Zippia to find and recruit operations vice president candidates who meet your exact specifications.
   • Use field-specific websites.
   • Post a job on free websites.

6. Interview candidates

   Recruiting operations vice presidents requires you to bring your A-game to the interview process. The first interview should introduce the company and the role to the candidate as much as they present their background experience and reasons for applying for the job. During later interviews, you can go into more detail about the technical details of the job and ask behavioral questions to gauge how they'd fit into your current company culture.

   You should also ask about candidates' unique skills and talents to see if they match the ideal candidate profile you developed earlier. Candidates good enough for the next step can complete the technical interview.

   The right interview questions can help you assess a candidate's hard skills, behavioral intelligence, and soft skills.

7. Send a job offer and onboard your new operations vice president

   Once you have selected a candidate for the operations vice president position, it is time to create an offer letter. In addition to salary, the offer letter should include details about benefits and perks that are available to the employee. Ensuring your offer is competitive is vital, as qualified candidates may be considering other job opportunities. The candidate may wish to negotiate the terms of the offer, and it is important to be open to discussion and reach a mutually beneficial agreement. After the offer has been accepted, it is a good idea to formalize the agreement with a contract.

   It's equally important to follow up with applicants who don't get the job with an email letting them know that the position has been filled.

   Once that's done, you can draft an onboarding schedule for the new operations vice president. Human Resources should complete Employee Action Forms and ensure that onboarding paperwork is completed, including I-9s, benefits enrollment, federal and state tax forms, etc. They should also ensure that new employee files are created for internal recordkeeping.

8. Go through the hiring process checklist

   • Determine employee type (full-time, part-time, contractor, etc.)
   • Submit a job requisition form to the HR department
   • Define job responsibilities and requirements
   • Establish budget and timeline
   • Determine hiring decision makers for the role
   • Write job description
   • Post job on job boards, company website, etc.
   • Promote the job internally
   • Process applications through applicant tracking system
   • Review resumes and cover letters
   • Shortlist candidates for screening
   • Hold phone/virtual interview screening with first round of candidates
   • Conduct in-person interviews with top candidates from first round
   • Score candidates based on weighted criteria (e.g., experience, education, background, cultural fit, skill set, etc.)
   • Conduct background checks on top candidates
   • Check references of top candidates
   • Consult with HR and hiring decision makers on job offer specifics
   • Extend offer to top candidate(s)
   • Receive formal job offer acceptance and signed employment contract
   • Inform other candidates that the position has been filled
   • Set and communicate onboarding schedule to new hire(s)
   • Complete new hire paperwork (i9, benefits enrollment, tax forms, etc.)

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