Should this role be a Director, VP, or Head of?

The title conversation is not cosmetic

The hiring team starts with a reasonable question: Should this person be a Director, VP, or Head of?

Then the conversation gets weird. Someone argues that VP will attract better candidates. Someone else worries the title will upset an existing executive. The founder wants someone senior enough to challenge the leadership team but hands-on enough to personally fix the CRM, write the plan, manage the agency, hire the team, and perhaps water the office plants if they look thirsty.

That is how companies end up with a VP title attached to Director authority, Manager budget, and a founder-sized list of expectations.

The title is a promise about the job. Make sure the company can keep it.

Titles only make sense inside context

A Director at a global company may lead more people, budget, complexity, and geographic scope than a VP at a 30-person startup. In financial services, technology, entertainment, manufacturing, nonprofits, and founder-led companies, the same title can mean wildly different things.

“Head of” is especially slippery. It often means the most senior person currently responsible for a function, not one standardized rung on the corporate ladder. A Head of People might be the CEO’s top people partner. A Head of Content might be a senior individual contributor building the capability alone. The title names functional ownership, but the rest of the job must tell us the level.

Do not ask which title is universally higher. Ask what this title will mean inside this company, at this stage, with this reporting line and this mandate.

A Director usually turns strategy into functional execution

A Director often owns a defined department, capability, region, or substantial piece of a function. They may manage managers, build operating plans, control a meaningful budget, improve systems, and translate broader company or functional strategy into results.

That does not make Director a small job. Some Directors run enormous scope. The distinction is usually that their primary accountability sits within a defined area, while a VP more often sets direction across a broader function and carries greater company-level influence and tradeoff authority.

A Director can report to the CEO in a smaller organization. Proximity to the CEO does not automatically change the level. The question is what the person owns and what kinds of decisions the company expects them to make.

A VP should carry functional and company-level authority

A credible VP role generally owns the direction and performance of a significant function. The person may lead Directors or multiple teams, allocate resources across priorities, influence company strategy, make decisions that affect peer functions, and represent the function in executive conversations.

The word that matters is authority. If the VP is accountable for growth but cannot change the team, budget, channel mix, agency model, product priorities, or cross-functional commitments affecting growth, the title is doing decorative work.

VP should not mean “the most experienced person willing to accept our compensation.” It should signal a real organizational layer with the sponsorship and decision rights to match.

Head of can be useful when the organization is still taking shape

Head of can be a smart title when someone owns the full function today, but the company is not ready to define the permanent executive hierarchy. It gives the person clear functional leadership without pretending the future org chart has already been laminated.

It can also be misused as a convenient way to request VP-level accountability while avoiding the title, compensation, or authority. Candidates notice when “Head of” means build the function, set the strategy, lead the team, advise the CEO, own the number, and still obtain approval for every meaningful decision.

If the role may later report to a VP or evolve into one, say so honestly. Do not offer a mysterious future promotion as payment for work the person must own immediately.

Use six tests before choosing the title

Test the strategic altitude without removing the actual work

Senior leaders still work. The difference is not that a VP floats above execution while a Director types frantically below. The useful distinction is the mix of work and the decisions attached to it.

A Director may spend more time turning strategy into operating plans, leading teams, solving delivery problems, and improving a defined system. A VP may spend more time setting priorities across the function, making portfolio tradeoffs, aligning peers, advising the CEO, managing senior leaders, and connecting functional decisions to company performance.

At an early-stage company, both roles may be deeply hands-on. Be precise about what hands-on means. Building the first operating model is senior work. Personally executing every recurring task because the company will not fund a team is a different job wearing the same adjective.

Do not use the title to solve a compensation problem

Companies sometimes inflate the title because they cannot meet the market compensation for the scope. The logic is that a candidate may accept less money in exchange for VP on LinkedIn.

Some will. The title still creates expectations about influence, team, access, authority, and future trajectory. If those expectations are not met, the bargain becomes obvious after the person joins, when replacing them is considerably less fun than recalibrating the role would have been.

The reverse also happens. The company calls the role Director to protect internal title equity but expects VP-level ownership and brings VP-level candidates into the process. If every strong candidate challenges the level or wants more than the budget, the market is not being difficult. It is reading the job you described.

Use the executive compensation calibration guide before trying to negotiate with an entire talent market through adjectives.

Check the title against the future organization

A title solves today’s problem and creates tomorrow’s org chart. Before naming the first functional leader VP, decide what happens when the company needs someone above them. Will the next layer become SVP or C-suite? Will the original hire genuinely have room to grow, or did the company spend the title before the person earned the future scope?

Before using Head of, decide whether it represents the permanent senior owner or the first version of the function. Before using Director, decide whether the candidate can succeed with the authority offered and whether the company is comfortable explaining why this mandate is not VP-level.

Future-proofing does not mean hiring three levels ahead. It means understanding the organizational promise created by the title and leaving yourself a credible structure as the company grows.

Interview the scope, not the candidate’s last title

A VP from a small company may be a brilliant builder but have limited experience leading leaders or operating at your scale. A Director from a global organization may have managed more complexity than anyone else in the slate. A Head of may have been the true functional executive or the first person doing the work.

Ask what they owned, which decisions they made, who reported to them, what budget and resources they controlled, how they influenced peers, what changed because of their leadership, and what required approval. Follow the title down into evidence.

My guide to evaluating executive candidates beyond interview polish helps the hiring team compare actual operating range instead of awarding points for familiar labels.

Write one internal sentence before you publish the role

Finish this sentence: “This is a [title]-level role because the person will own ___, decide ___, lead ___, and be accountable for ___.”

If the hiring team cannot complete it without arguing, keep working. That argument is cheaper now than it will be after sourcing begins.

Then make the job description, interview scorecard, compensation, reporting line, and search strategy agree. The executive job-description guide gives you the full brief structure, and the executive scorecard guide turns the agreed level into a consistent assessment process.

When you should call me

Call me when one person says Director, another says VP, and the founder says, “I do not care about the title. I just need someone amazing,” immediately before describing three different jobs.

I help founders and hiring teams define the mandate, calibrate the level, test the reporting structure, align the authority and compensation, and read how the candidate market will interpret the opportunity. Then I can help find and assess the people whose actual scope matches the job.

I have spent more than 20 years recruiting across Google, Meta, TKO, and founder-led companies. I have seen Manager titles hide Senior Director work, VP titles disguise player-coach roles, and senior candidates rejected because the hiring team read the label instead of the evidence.

Bring me the org chart, job description, budget, business problem, and every opinion currently attached to the title. I will help you decide what level the company needs and whether it is prepared to support it.

Frequently asked questions about Director, VP, and Head of titles