A Recruiting Leader’s Guide to Managing On-Hold Requisitions
Table of Contents
On-hold requisitions are an inevitable challenge that can have far-reaching implications. Understanding the problems associated with these holds and taking proactive measures to manage them can make a significant difference in maintaining a smooth headcount management process.
Problems Associated with Putting Requisitions on Hold
Unclear Financial Projections
Impact: Undefined or indefinitely postponed start dates can cause significant budgetary issues. Salary dollars allocated for these roles cannot be reallocated elsewhere, leading to financial planning challenges.
Solution: Align requisitions with the next financial forecast to provide clearer financial projections.
Candidate Experience
Impact: Jobs in an on-hold status typically correlate with increased time in stage for posted jobs, leading to a poor candidate experience. Keeping candidates engaged during these periods is labor-intensive and often results in candidates losing interest or ghosting.
Solution: Develop a robust candidate communication plan to keep potential hires informed and engaged. Create standardized, updates for on-hold requisitions that paint clear timelines for resolution. Pipeline candidates against active jobs.
Reduced Recruiting Capacity
Impact: Recruiters must continue to manage these pipelines, even if the roles are not being actively filled, especially if candidate experience scores affect their performance evaluations.
Solution: Unpublish requisitions with unclear start dates and incorporate hold status reporting in recruiter performance management. Hold status reporting helps tell the story of recruiter performance during review periods
Mismanaged Hiring Manager Expectations
Impact: Hiring managers are often frustrated by holds, complicating their job and creating unrealistic expectations once the requisition is reactivated.
Solution: Partner with finance to communicate status changes clearly and manage expectations about time to fill once the hold is lifted.
Impacted Data for Future Projections
Impact: On-hold statuses can distort metrics like time to fill and time to hire, leading to unreliable future performance projections.
Solution: Identify and exclude outliers caused by on-hold requisitions in future analyses to maintain credibility in performance projections.
Why Do On-Hold Requisitions Exist?
Headcount Financial Reporting
Reason: Finance may lack the necessary information to release funds for new hires, causing delays.
Action: Ensure thorough and transparent communication between recruiting and finance teams. headcount365 creates a real time communication channel between holds with financial origins and the hiring & recruiting teams.
Evergreen Role Tracking
Reason: Roles that are perpetually open may not have streamlined processes for tracking and updating their status.
Action: Develop a clear process for managing evergreen roles. Where possible use a unique requisition ID for each individual requisition that business will hire. Ensure real-time communication of hired/confirmed filled evergreen roles so finance can have the most up-to-date forecast on evergreen financials. Proactively seek approval for hires on new roles to open.
Contingent Actions
Reason: Hiring may depend on external actions or approvals that have yet to occur.
Action: Maintain open lines of communication to expedite these contingent actions. headcount365 allows for scenario adoption, but for those without a system, create a regular cadence to sync with finance on whether or not net new roles will open as a result of financial performance. Do your best to partner with finance to communicate with hiring managers for hiring don’t agree with the headcount plan.
Operational Plan Changes
Reason: Shifts in business priorities can lead to sudden changes in hiring plans.
Action: Stay agile and ready to adjust recruiting strategies in response to operational changes. Maintain a flexible recruiting capacity to ensure the business can flex with spikes in demand. Leverage a workload dashboard to balance the workload between recruiters. Leverage predictive start dates to ensure you can flex with external resources.
Key Actions to Successfully Manage On-Hold Requisitions
Align Requisitions with the Next Financial Forecast
Push start dates of on-hold requisitions to the beginning of the next financial planning period to provide clear financial projections.
Partner with Finance for Status Updates
Work closely with finance to keep hiring managers informed of any status changes and manage their expectations effectively.
Create a Candidate Communication Plan
Unpublish requisitions with unclear start dates to avoid confusion. Develop a comprehensive communication plan to keep candidates updated on their application status.
Incorporate Hold Status Reporting
Include on-hold status metrics in recruiter performance evaluations to ensure accurate and fair performance assessments.
Identify Outliers for Future Analysis
Recognize and exclude data outliers caused by on-hold requisitions to maintain the accuracy and reliability of future performance projections.
How Headcount365 Can Help
A key success metric of headcount365 is reducing the number of on-hold requisitions on every plan year. By providing a real-time connection between recruiting activity & a financial forecast, we ensure there is less ambiguity in every headcount plan. We do this by linking every requisition to every system with one unique ID using an API connection to keep finance, recruiting, HR, and hiring teams in sync. headcount365 tracks all changes to the financial forecast and instantly syncs them to the FP&A system reducing the delay of headcount financial information from hired roles, backfills, or changes.
With real-time data and robust tracking capabilities, Headcount365 helps businesses stay agile and responsive to changes, ensuring smoother financial planning and better candidate experiences.By understanding the challenges and taking proactive steps, recruiting leaders can manage on-hold requisitions more effectively, ensuring that both financial projections and candidate experiences are optimized for success.
