For most Visionaries, hiring an Integrator feels like leaving their baby with a teenage babysitter who swears they’re “great with kids” — but you’ve only just met them, and they drove up blasting party music. It’s equal parts thrilling and mildly terrifying.
Here at The Metiss Group, we have the industry’s best Integrator hiring services for people running on EOS.
Let’s talk about how to do it right, from the biggest mistakes people make to the systems we use to get it smooth and sticky (the good kind of sticky).
Why Hiring the Right Integrator Is Crucial for Company Growth
If you hire the wrong Integrator, you might not even realize it at first. On paper, everything can look fine — until the wheels start to wobble.
Think about it: the Integrator is one of the most critical hires your company can make. When you appoint a key leader who isn't a good fit for your organization, your entire team will lose confidence, and decision-making will suffer across the board.
Like the book Speed of Trust says: building trust is like climbing a giant ladder. One bad step and you’re back at the bottom, real quickly.
And if you churn through Integrators, the next one walks into a room full of people who are already spooked. This role isn’t just critical, it’s sensitive. Which makes hiring right all the more important.
Common Mistakes Companies Make When Hiring an Integrator
Let’s say you’re leading a SaaS company. You start thinking about your Integrator hire and immediately convince yourself they need to be a programming whiz. Because... tech company, right?
Except this isn’t about industry skills. In fact, the best Integrators our clients have hired were from outside their industry.
The Integrator isn’t supposed to be the expert coder, the sales machine, or the product genius. Their job is to integrate: to get all the brilliant parts of your business working together, clear the blockers, and stay out of people’s way.
If you hire someone based on technical skills they don’t even need, they’ll start micromanaging. They’ll be “helping” the product team by rewriting code or “supporting” marketing by picking apart ad copy.
Nobody wants that. You end up with someone who’s busy doing everyone else’s job, instead of helping them do it better.
And here's the other trap: Visionaries tend to hire people just like themselves. This sounds fun, until you remember the whole reason you're hiring an Integrator is because you're not naturally wired to do the Integrator stuff. So hiring your clone isn’t going to be helpful.
On the flip side, going for your total opposite might sound smart — but if you’re a bold, fast-paced, high-dominance Visionary and your Integrator is super reserved and slow to speak up, that’s not balance. That’s a recipe for someone getting flattened.
Without a clear scorecard to guide what the role actually needs, you end up guessing. And guessing turns into hiring based on vibes. That’s a terrible hiring strategy.
People also make the mistake of spending waaaaay too much money hiring an Integrator. If you work with a recruiter, the cost is typically tied to the Integrator’s salary. Most search firms charge up to 30% of the new hire’s first-year total compensation. That means if your Integrator is making $200,000, you’re looking at minimally a $60,000 recruiter fee for the placement (the 30% also includes anticipated bonus eligibility).
The Metiss Group's Proven Process for Hiring an Integrator
Here’s how we make Integrator hires way less painful — and way more likely to stick.
We start with the Visionary's scorecard. That might seem backward, but trust us: if the Visionary isn’t clear on what they want to be doing (and not doing), then the Integrator can’t possibly step into the right space.
Most Visionaries say they’re ready to hand off the day-to-day, but when the time comes? They freeze. It’s like planning a dream vacation, counting down the days, and then standing in the airport thinking, Wait… who’s going to feed the dog? What if the plane crashes? Do I even like the beach?
A detailed job scorecard helps snap them out of that spiral. It shows them exactly what they will be doing instead — big-picture strategy, innovation, growth — which gets them genuinely excited to step out of the weeds and back into their sweet spot.
Once that’s clear, then we build the Integrator’s scorecard to complement it.
Then we shape out the avatar: what kind of person will thrive in this company, with this culture, doing this very specific job?
Our final secret is our 12-month coaching program. It starts with a senior advisor from The Metiss Group sitting down with the Visionary and Integrator to update the scorecard for real-time expectations in that first quarter.
Maybe they need training. Maybe they need to soak up the industry. We’ll help map that out.
Each quarter, we check in, adjust the scorecard, and recalibrate the partnership. No confusion, and no overlapping responsibilities. Just two people learning to speak with one voice.
We also coach them on how to communicate without stepping on each other’s toes. How to push each other without blowing things up. How to actually enjoy working together. It’s not magic — but it’s close.
Case Study: How Jackrabbit Found the Perfect Integrator
Mark Mahoney, co-founder of Jackrabbit Technologies, gets this. About seven or eight years ago, he came to us with a dream: spend more time at the beach. (We get it, Mark. Saltwater solves a lot.) But he and his partner were still buried in the business, stuck in the thick of the day-to-day.
We helped them bring on an Integrator. Mark got his time back, the company ran smoother, and things just clicked. As Mark consistently bragged to his EO Forum buddies, he was finally able to live his EOS life.
Years later, that first Integrator retired. Mark told us, “Okay, time for round two.” He was so thrilled with the first one, he couldn’t imagine working with anyone else’s hiring process, so he called us.
This time, his business had changed, and the role had to evolve with it. We updated both scorecards and started fresh.
Mark just hired his second Integrator. “The Metiss Group did a great job of walking us through what this person’s strengths and talents needed to be,” he said. See his full testimonial below.
Final Thoughts on Successfully Hiring an Integrator
Hiring an Integrator is one of the most critical leadership decisions you’ll make. Done right, it frees you up to lead boldly, build your future, and yes — maybe even get a little beach time. Done wrong, it creates confusion, churn, and trust issues that can take forever to fix.
Start with clarity. Build the right scorecards. Use assessments that go deeper than resumes. And support the hire long after the offer letter goes out.
Here at The Metiss Group, we guide our clients using our proven Integrator Hiring process so they can find the right Integrator for their EOS business.
Now that you understand how to successfully hire an integrator, the next step is to learn the problems companies face when hiring an integrator so you can get ahead of the issues.
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