Hiring plan org chart
A hiring plan is a list of roles, quarters and numbers, and it goes wrong the way lists do: the eighth engineer is approved before the manager who will run them, two teams count the same backfill, and nobody notices that the sales leader will have nine reports by the fourth quarter. Draw the plan as an org chart, with every approved role as an open card where it will report, and those problems are visible before a requisition opens. Here is one company drawn today and as planned, and the sequence for doing it.
Today
The plan, four quarters
The sequence
Six steps, in this order, because each one is cheaper before the next.
Start from the chart that is true today
Export the people from the HR system, import the list, and fix the three managers it gets wrong. Date it. Every number in the plan is measured from this chart, and a plan measured from a chart nobody trusts is argued about before it is read.
Draw every approved role as an open card
Where it will report, with the title it will be posted under and the quarter it starts, in the title. Approved means approved: a role that is wished for, or budgeted but not signed off, is not a card. The chart is the plan, not the ambition.
Add the managers before the reports
If a team will pass eight people by the fourth quarter, its manager is a card with an earlier quarter than the reports under it, and the reports hang from the open manager, not from whoever runs the team today. A plan that hires eight engineers and then a manager has hired a manager into a team that already has habits.
Check the plan, not today
Spans, layers and dotted lines are checked on the planned chart, because that is the one that has to work. Today's chart has already survived; the plan has not. The six checks below are the ones that fail most often.
Count it by department
The table below is read off the two charts, not typed. Finance costs the open cards; people staffs them; the hiring managers see their own column and argue about it once, in one meeting, instead of in twelve.
Keep the plan as the live chart
When a hire starts, the open card becomes a person. When a requisition is cut, its card is deleted, not annotated. At the end of each quarter, export the leadership view for the board; the full chart stays with the recruiters. The plan is never a separate document that has to be reconciled with the chart, because it is the chart.
What to check on the plan
Six checks. Each is one minute on the drawn chart and a quarter of arguing on the spreadsheet.
Every open role has a quarter
A card without a quarter is a wish. The quarter is when the person starts, not when the requisition opens, and it goes first in the title, so it survives every export and every narrow card.
The manager comes first
An open manager's quarter is earlier than every open report beneath them. If it is not, either the manager is not needed yet or the reports are being hired into nobody's team.
Backfills are not growth
A backfill keeps the leaver's seat: draw the open card in their place with "backfill" in the title, and leave it out of the growth count. A plan that counts backfills as new headcount hires two people for one desk.
A converting contractor is one seat
The outside bookkeeper and the open accountant are one seat, not two. Give the contractor's card the quarter they leave and the open card the quarter it starts, and count once.
Nobody's planned span passes eight
The VP of sales has three reports today and six on the plan; at nine, the plan needs a sales manager card before the ninth hire, not after. Read every span off the planned chart, not the current one.
Four quarters, one chart
Quarters go in titles, not in separate charts. One chart with every approved role reads as a plan; four charts read as four arguments, and the third one is always out of date.
The plan by department
Read off the two charts above, not typed: the same list the finance partner costs and the recruiters work from.
| Department | Today | Open roles | Planned |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leadership | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Engineering | 7 | 3 | 10 |
| Data | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Product | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| Sales | 4 | 3 | 7 |
| Customer Success | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| Marketing | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Finance | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| People | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Total | 24 | 12 | 36 |
The outside bookkeeper counts as a seat today and until the third quarter; the accountant replaces it, so finance grows by one seat, not two. One engineer moves from the product team to the platform team, which changes no total.
Presenting the plan
The board wants one chart and the recruiters want another, and both come from the same file. For the board, export the leadership view: the chief executive's reports with the planned team size in each title, "Engineering, 7 to 10", and the open executive roles drawn as open, because a head of people the board has not seen on a chart is a hire the board has not approved. For the hiring managers and the recruiters, the full chart, every open card with its quarter, filtered to their team when the whole thing is too much.
What neither audience gets is a chart per quarter. One chart, quarters in the titles, and a table like the one above. When someone asks what the company looks like in the second quarter, the answer is the chart with the first- and second-quarter cards filled and the rest still open, which is the same chart read at a different date.
Questions people ask
- How do you show open positions on an org chart?
- As open cards, drawn where the role will report, marked as open rather than given a placeholder name, with the title the role will be posted under and its start quarter in the title. A drawn open role has a manager, a team and a place in a span, which is what a line in a spreadsheet lacks and what makes the plan checkable.
- Should a hiring plan be a spreadsheet or an org chart?
- Both, and they are the same list. The spreadsheet holds what a chart should not: salary bands, requisition numbers, approvals. The chart holds what a spreadsheet cannot show: where each role reports, what the team looks like when it lands, and whose span it strains. Import the list and the chart is drawn; keep editing the chart and export the list back.
- How far ahead should a hiring plan org chart go?
- Four quarters in full, with every approved role a card. Beyond a year, roles are not approved and the chart would be fiction; draw the leadership view with planned team sizes in the titles instead, which is also the chart the board wants.
- How do you handle backfills on the plan?
- Keep the seat. Draw an open card where the leaver sat, with "backfill" in the title and the quarter the replacement starts, and leave it out of the growth count. The seat is on the chart because the team has it; it is not growth because the team already had it.
- Who owns the hiring plan chart?
- One person, usually the head of people or the finance partner who costs it. Hiring managers propose roles, finance approves them, the owner draws them; nobody else edits the plan, and everybody can see it. A plan with three editors has three plans.
- What happens when the plan changes?
- It changes every month, and the chart changes with it. A cut requisition is deleted, a delayed one gets a later quarter, a hire that starts becomes a person on the day. The export at the end of each quarter is the record of what the plan was; the live chart is what it is.
Draw the plan, then hire to it
Import today's list, add the approved roles as open cards, and the chart shows the team you are hiring for and every span it strains. Building is free at any size, and the plan stays current as the offers close.