A hiring plan names its roles months before anyone approves them. The first note to a candidate still tends to go out after approval, often in the week the job post appears, so the months when the team already knew the role was coming pass without a single conversation about it.
Your applicant tracking system (ATS) holds a record on each person your team has met, and that whole record is your wider talent pool. The part worth managing week to week is narrower: a short list of people for each line on the plan, which I’ll call its reserve, made up of people your team has spoken to who told you when they could move.
I’d have the plan carry named people behind each line, and let the plan’s own dates tell the recruiter when to write to them, long before the job post exists.
Read the hiring plan for budget and dates before building a talent pool.
Before you build any reserve, read each line of the plan for two answers: whether its budget is signed off, and whether it has a start date. Together they decide what the line gets:
| Line on the plan | Its reserve |
|---|---|
| Budget signed off, start date set | A reserve you write to in the weeks before that date |
| Budget signed off, start date still open | A reserve you keep current until the date is fixed |
| Budget pending | A short reserve, written to as an unconfirmed role |
| A role you will fill once, such as the first hire in a new function | No reserve, and a search once the role is approved |
Name an owner for each reserve, and make it the recruiter who will run the role once it opens. They will be the one writing to its people, so the reserve should be theirs to keep current.
Stock each reserve with people who gave you a date.
Fill a reserve only with people your team has already spoken to. Referrals you couldn’t place and employees who asked to move are the obvious start. Sourced prospects who said “not yet” and finalists from the last search for that line come next.
Leave people your team has never spoken to in the wider record, where a search can still find them. Keep anyone who asked not to be contacted out of every reserve, and note the request on their ATS record.
The date lets the plan’s calendar set when you write, so ask for the date at close. In the last conversation of any process with a strong candidate, ask when a move might suit them and whether they’d like a note when a role like this one is approved. Write their answer on the record that day.
Write differently about an unconfirmed role.
A line marked as pending is the one most worth preparing for, and the easiest to oversell. Have the reserve’s owner write to each person in it a few weeks before the expected approval. Say what is true: the team expects to open a role like theirs, and the budget isn’t signed off yet.
Build the note on what they told you last time, and ask whether their timing still holds. I’d expect people to keep answering a recruiter who told them plainly that a role might not happen, and to stop answering one whose promised role never came.
Some people in a reserve may also have signed up for regular news about your team. That list runs on its own schedule, which this guide to running a talent community covers.
Put the reserve in the headcount request.
A headcount request usually carries a role and a start date. List the named people in it: how many sit behind the line, and the earliest date any of them gave. The approver then sees a start date that rests on people your team has met.
Once the role is approved, write that day to the people whose dates have come around, with the role and what has changed since you last spoke.
Bring their replies to the intake call. That way the hiring manager knows which of the people behind the line want to talk before the brief is agreed.
Re-file finalists against the plan once an offer is accepted.
When someone accepts the offer, go through the finalists who didn’t get it and file each against a line on the plan, with the date they gave in their closing conversation.
The line is often the same one, reopening later. Sometimes it is a different one, such as a more junior role planned for next year that suits a finalist who was strong but early in their career. Leave anyone who fits no line on the current plan in the wider record until a plan names a role for them.
Where Metaview fits in a hiring pool.
Every reserve entry depends on something a candidate said on a call, usually a date, and that is the detail most likely to stay in a recruiter’s head.
The Metaview Notetaker joins a recruiter’s screening call, or an interview, where everyone on it can see it in the participant list. Candidates are told about it in conditional terms: “If both you and the interviewer consent, you will see a ‘Metaview Notetaker’ appear as a participant during the interview.”
Where both agree, Metaview records the conversation and transcribes it. Structured notes for the call are built from that transcript.
Metaview captures every spoken word of a recruiter’s screening call, so when a candidate names the month a move would suit them, the recruiter can find that sentence in the transcript and copy the date onto the reserve entry as it was said.
I don’t think the answer to an information problem is making decisions with even less information.”
A reserve entry that reads only “interested, maybe next year” leaves the recruiter making that kind of decision when the approval arrives.
In Reports, question coverage can be compared across interviewers and roles, using your team’s own interview data. Before writing to a reserve for a planned role, check the recorded interviews: did a former finalist’s interviews on Metaview ask about the competency that role needs?
- 1A “Final Alignment” interview, the late stage that most of a reserve’s finalists reached.
- 2“Collaboration,” one competency you might hold up against what a planned role needs.
- 3That late interview asked two questions on “Collaboration,” enough to say whether it was covered at all.
Another illustration of Reports showed a column added beside each candidate’s calls for what they said about pay. For a planned role with a fixed salary band, that is the detail I’d want in front of me before writing to anyone in its reserve.
- 1Adam Z.’s answer, a range instead of one number, which a note to him should repeat as a range.
- 2Gemma B.’s figure, from a “Recruiter Screen” call.
- 3Marc S.’s figure, from a hiring manager’s screening call, so check which call a number came from before you quote it back.
On approval day a reserve may still be thin for the role, and AI Sourcing can search for the rest. Give it one plain-language description of the approved role. The sourcing agent then searches your team’s recorded Metaview conversations and the candidates backfilled from your connected ATS, as well as the web.
A former finalist can come back beside people the team has never met, each with a line on why they were picked. No one on that list hears from your team until the reserve’s owner writes to them, and deciding who fits is the owner’s work too.
Bring the reserves to the next planning round.
The planning round is where the pool feeds back into the plan. Set each line’s reserve beside it, and let what you find change the plan as well as the pool:
| What the reserve shows | What the next plan should do |
|---|---|
| No one behind a line that comes due soon | Schedule sourcing for that line now, or move its start date |
| Dates that all fall after the planned start | Ask the hiring manager whether the start can move to meet them |
| A reserve no one has touched since the last round | Hand the line to the recruiter who will run the role |
| A dropped line whose reserve never heard about it | Write to those people before the round closes |
| Last quarter’s finalists missing from every reserve | File them against a line before the next offer is accepted |
Then take the line due for approval soonest and count the people in its reserve whose dates fall before its start. If that count is zero, the search for that role starts this week, while it is still a row in a spreadsheet, so it reaches approval with a pipeline already started.
Keep named people behind every role on your hiring plan.
See where a candidate’s timing gets written down: the Notetaker’s record of a recruiter’s screening call, and Reports on your own interviews.
Frequently asked.
What if someone in a talent pool applies before the role is approved?
Treat the application as a reply. Tell them the role isn’t open yet and keep the application on file. Then put them first on the list for approval day, because applying has told you their timing more clearly than a closing conversation could.
Does a reserve survive when its recruiter leaves?
Only if it lives in your ATS instead of in their inbox. Keep each reserve as a tag or a list on the candidate records, and hand it to the next recruiter along with the line, the way you would hand over an open req.
Can one person sit in more than one reserve?
Yes, when they would fit two lines, such as the same role at two levels. Note which line they’d prefer, and let one recruiter own the conversation, so they don’t hear about two roles from two people in the same week.
Should employees who want a move be in a reserve?
Yes, under the line they want to move into, within what your internal mobility policy says about telling their manager. Write to them on the same dates as everyone else in the reserve, so they don’t learn about a role on their own company’s plan after outside candidates do.
How far ahead should you build a reserve for a planned role?
From the day the line appears on the plan. A role approved within weeks of being added leaves little time, so for those lines, source into the reserve straight away instead of waiting for finalists to be filed against it.
