Hiring Plan

What goes into a hiring plan

A useful strategic hiring plan answers six questions for each role family: how many, by when, where, at what cost, from which sources, and who recruits them. In practice that means a table with one row per role and location, monthly start targets, the approved pay range, the expected cost per hire, the main sources and the recruiter assigned.

The plan sits between two other pieces of work. Upstream is headcount planning, where finance and business leaders agree how many people each team should have. Downstream are individual job requisitions, which authorize recruiting for a specific opening. The hiring plan connects them by turning "we need 100 people by December" into "we need 5 starts in each of these months, and these requisitions must open by these dates."

The word "recruitment plan" is often used for the same thing. Some teams use it more narrowly, for the sourcing and process plan behind one hard-to-fill role. If you need a ready format, start with our recruitment plan template.

Building an annual hiring plan step by step

1. Start from approved headcount. Get end-of-period targets by team from finance. If they do not exist yet, the hiring plan will be a guess.
2. Add backfills. Use each team's actual turnover for the last 12 months. In hourly operations, backfills are often more than half of all hiring.
3. Work back from start dates. If time to fill for a role is 35 days and new hires need two weeks' notice, requisitions must open about seven weeks before the target start.
4. Check recruiter capacity. A common benchmark is 15 to 25 open requisitions per corporate recruiter, while a high-volume recruiter with good automation can handle far more hires per month. If the plan needs more capacity than you have, decide now whether to add recruiters, use agencies or move dates.
5. Budget it. Multiply planned hires by expected cost per hire for each source mix, and add fixed costs such as tools and events.
6. Review monthly. Compare planned starts with actual starts and re-forecast.

Hiring plans for high-volume and seasonal work

In contact centers, warehouses and retail, the plan is usually built around classes or waves rather than individual openings. A 400-seat contact center with 45% annual attrition needs about 180 backfill hires a year before any growth. If training classes hold 20 people and 15% drop out during training, that is roughly 11 classes a year, about one a month, with peaks before seasonal volume.

The plan then drives everything else: how many applicants you need per class (often 8 to 15 per start for entry-level roles), when job ads go live, when seasonal hiring events are booked, and how many trainers and team leaders are needed. Many teams in this setting run evergreen requisitions so sourcing never stops between classes.

Hiring plan vs workforce plan

Workforce planning is broader. It looks at the skills and structure the business needs over two to five years and decides whether to build them through training, buy them through hiring, borrow them through contractors, or automate the work. The hiring plan is the part of that answer that involves recruiting, usually for the next 12 months, at the level of roles, numbers and dates.

A hiring plan without a workforce plan tends to replace whoever left with the same role. A workforce plan without a hiring plan never turns into requisitions. Most mid-size companies need both, even if the workforce plan is a two-page document.

Common mistakes

• Ignoring attrition. Planning only for new positions is the most common error, and it leaves teams permanently short.
• Planning in hires, not starts. An accepted offer is not a person in seat. Plan for start dates and allow for renegers and no-shows, which can run 5% to 15% for hourly roles.
• One time-to-fill figure for every role. A cashier and a payroll manager do not take the same time to hire. Use role-specific figures.
• No owner for re-forecasting. Plans drift within a quarter. Name someone who updates the plan monthly with actual starts and leavers.
• Treating the plan as a budget only. The plan is also a capacity and process document. If it shows you need 60 starts in October, the interview and onboarding slots must exist too.

For a longer walk-through of planning for growth, see this guide to building a strategic hiring plan. The plan should also reflect your wider talent acquisition strategy on sources, employer brand and internal mobility.