Job Requisition

What a job requisition is

A job requisition (طلب شغل الوظيفة) is the formal request by which a manager opens a vacancy. It describes the role that is needed, the justification for it and its budget, and it goes through approval before recruitment begins.

Each part of the definition does work. The request is formal, so it exists in writing and not only as a conversation between a manager and the HR team. It describes the role, the justification and the budget, so the person approving it can see what is being asked for, why it is being asked for, and what it will cost. And it is approved before recruitment begins, so the search for a candidate starts only once the approval has been given.

The approval of a job requisition is also a point from which other measures can count. Time to fill, the number of days between opening a requisition for a role and the day the person appointed to it starts work, can take the day the requisition is approved as its first day. A candidate pipeline, the whole set of candidates moving towards one specific vacancy, is taken as beginning when the job requisition is approved. The requisition is the manager’s request to open the vacancy; it is not a candidate’s application for it.

What a job requisition prevents

A job requisition is not a piece of paperwork kept for the procedure’s sake. It is the control point between what a department wants and what the organisation has the capacity to carry.

Without it, there is no single place where an appointment is measured against the total. Each appointment looks reasonable on its own, but the total is what exceeds the budget, and nothing shows that before it happens. A department manager asking for a post sees one need and one salary. The figure the budget depends on is the sum of every post requested across every department, and that sum can be seen only where each request is recorded and set against it.

With a requisition in place, every appointment has a written justification and an owner. The justification records why the post is needed. The owner is the person who asked for the post and who answers for the request. Both exist before the decision to hire is taken, and not after it.

What a job requisition contains

• The role and the department. It names the role, the department in which the role sits and the person to whom it reports.
• The reason for the role. It states whether the role replaces someone who has left or is a new position. The distinction is not an administrative classification. It is what opens a review of the role or closes it.
• The pay range. It gives the pay range approved for the grade of the job. That is the same range within which employee grade placement fixes an employee’s point inside the grade.
• The justification. It states what is not being done today because the role is unfilled.
• The target start date. It records the date on which the person appointed is expected to start work.
• The approval path. It sets out who signs the requisition and in what order.

Taken together, these lines answer the questions an approver would otherwise have to ask one by one. The role and the department place the post in the structure. The reason shows whether the structure stays as it was or grows. From the pay range, the approver can see what the post will cost within its grade, while the justification shows what the organisation goes without while the post is empty. A target start date places both the need and the cost in time, and the approval path shows whose signature the request still needs.

Replacement versus new position in a job requisition

The reason field in a job requisition accepts an automatic answer, and that answer is “replacement”. A replacement assumes that the role is still needed in the form it had. The departure of the previous holder is a moment at which that assumption can be reviewed at no cost, through three questions:

• Have the tasks of the role changed?
• Have some of those tasks been distributed among other roles?
• Has what the organisation needs from the role changed?

When the answer “replacement” is given without these questions, the requisition reproduces the role as it stood before the departure. An organisation that fills replacements automatically fixes its structure in the shape of the past.

That is why the reason line opens or closes a review. A new position is reviewed because it adds to the structure. A replacement can pass without review because it appears to change nothing, and the moment at which the role could have been reconsidered passes with it.

What undermines a job requisition

• A long approval path with no deadline. It leaves the request waiting with no time limit, and once the wait has no ceiling, going around the requisition can cost less than waiting for it. A manager who needs the post filled then has a reason to look for another route to the appointment, and the control point is bypassed.
• A form that asks for what is not used. It asks questions whose answers play no part in the decision, so those fields can end up filled in with anything. The approver then signs on the strength of entries that do not describe the role.
• Approval without a budget check. It turns the signature into a formality. The requisition then records that a post was approved, but not that anyone confirmed the budget could carry it.

Each of these keeps the job requisition in place as a document while removing what made it a control point: a deadline that keeps it worth using, entries that describe the role, and a signature that rests on a check of the budget.

How a job requisition relates to workforce planning

The job requisition is where workforce planning meets execution. The plan states what the organisation needs over the year, and the requisition turns that need into a vacancy with a date and an owner.

The two depend on each other. A plan without requisitions remains a document: it describes a need, but nothing in it opens a vacancy or names the day on which someone is expected to start. Requisitions without a plan turn into hiring by request rather than by direction: each one answers the need of the department that raised it, and none of them is set against the direction the organisation as a whole has chosen.

Once the vacancy opened by a requisition is filled, the recruiting costs of filling it are among those that cost per hire adds together for a period before dividing by the number of hires made in it.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.

Related terms

• Time to Fill
• Candidate Pipeline
• Employee Grade Placement
• Cost per Hire
• Capacity Planning