Job Requisition

What a job requisition contains

Requisition forms differ, but a complete one covers:

• Role details: job title and code, department, location, reporting manager, job description link.
• Reason for the hire: new headcount, backfill for a departure, temporary cover, conversion of a contractor.
• Headcount: one opening or many under the same req.
• Employment type: full-time, part-time, temporary, seasonal; exempt or non-exempt.
• Budget: pay range or grade, sign-on or relocation allowance, cost center.
• Timing: target start date, and for classes, the training start date.
• Hiring team: recruiter, coordinator, interviewers.
• Approvals: names and dates.

Our job requisition form includes all of these fields in a format ready to adapt to your approval chain.

The requisition approval process

A typical flow runs: hiring manager drafts, HR business partner reviews the role and grade, finance confirms the budget against the headcount plan, a senior leader signs off, then the req opens in the applicant tracking system and is assigned to a recruiter.

The common failure is too many approvers for routine hires. If a backfill for a departing contact center agent at the same pay needs four signatures, approval can take longer than recruiting itself. A better design splits reqs into tiers:

• Pre-approved: backfills and roles already in the approved hiring plan, at or below budgeted pay. One approval, often automatic.
• Standard: new headcount within the annual budget. HR and finance approval.
• Exception: off-plan headcount, pay above range, executive roles. Full approval chain.

Set a service level for approvals, for example two business days, and track approval time as its own metric.

Open, evergreen and pipeline requisitions

• Open requisition: an approved, active req that recruiting is working on. The open req count is the main measure of recruiter workload.
• Evergreen requisition: a single req kept open continuously for a role with constant demand, such as warehouse associates or nurses. It collects candidates year-round, and individual hires are drawn against it as openings arise.
• Pipeline or proactive req: opened to build a candidate pool before a confirmed opening.
• On-hold or frozen req: approved but paused, often during a hiring freeze.

For high-volume roles, evergreen reqs make sense, but report against the real number of seats needed per month, not against the single req, or your time to fill and recruiter load numbers will be meaningless.

A worked example

A 400-seat customer support operation plans to start a 25-person training class on the first Monday of every month. Rather than open 25 individual reqs each month, the workforce planning lead, Marcus, opens one req per class with a headcount of 25 and a training start date, plus a standing evergreen req for the role that keeps the candidate pool warm.

Each class req is pre-approved because it falls inside the annual plan. The recruiter can see 25 seats to fill against a hard date. When attrition runs higher than forecast, Marcus raises the next class to 30 through a standard approval, which finance turns around in a day because the change is within the quarterly budget. The team measures fill rate per class rather than days open, which is the number operations leaders actually care about.

Common mistakes

• Opening a req before the job is defined. Recruiting starts, then the manager changes the requirements and candidates are wasted.
• Pay ranges set without market data, which leads to failed searches and later exception approvals.
• Ghost reqs: postings left open with no intention to hire. They waste candidate time and distort metrics.
• No link between reqs and the budget, so finance discovers overspend after offers are made.
• Not closing reqs. Filled or cancelled reqs left open inflate open-req counts and time-to-fill.

Federal contractors should also remember that requisition records, postings and applicant data are part of the records they may need to produce in an OFCCP review. Keep them for the required retention period.