<aside> 💡 Openings allow you to build and track your headcount plan directly in Ashby, ensuring your team’s data quality and giving you the information you need where you need it.
The Openings feature in Ashby lets you track your open headcount, hiring goals as well as metrics for each individual headcount accurately. You can assign multiple openings to a single job.
</aside>
Openings Management is available on the following plans:
| Foundations | Legacy Plus | Plus | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| ❌ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Section overview:
Headcount planning is essential to achieving operational excellence in hiring. Doing so helps your team to understand if you have the knowledge and skills on the team to achieve your goals, and to reduce costs on hiring workflows that don’t yield results. This guide covers openings, which represent individual headcount that your team wants to fill. Openings in Ashby let you track your open headcount, hiring goals as well as metrics for each individual headcount accurately.
https://www.loom.com/share/54e36bc26af140dd9dbe2cb94cf35360
See the table below for information on the roles that have access to configure openings settings and set up openings.
| Access Role | Has access to enable/configure opening settings? | Can see openings (for departments and jobs they have access to)? | Can create an opening? | Can link an opening to a job? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Limited Access | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Agency Users | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Elevated Access - External Recruiter (not linked to an agency) | ❌ | ✅ * | ✅ | ❌ |
| Elevated Access - Analyst | ❌ | ✅ * | ✅ | ❌ |
| Elevated Access - Hiring Team Member | ❌ | ✅ * | ✅ | ❌ |
| Elevated Access - Hiring Manager | ❌ | ✅ * | ✅ | ❌ |
| Elevated Access - Admin | ❌ | ✅ * | ✅ | ✅ |
| Elevated Access - Admin Private | ❌ | ✅ * | ✅ | ✅ |
| Organization Admin | ✅ | ✅ * | ✅ | ✅ |
*If you provide a user with Manage Openings access as part of their permissions, they will be able to see all openings for departments and jobs they have access and also any openings that aren’t linked to a job. More on this at Additional User Permissions
Only Organization Admins can configure openings settings but Elevated Access users can create an opening and link it to a department. Only those with Elevated Access - Admin Access or higher can link an opening to a role that they have access to.
Openings allow you to ensure that hiring only happens against approved headcount. To that end you should follow these best practices:
When you are actively hiring for a job, it should be linked to at least one approved opening.
Whenever you make a hire, it should be linked to an approved opening (and if you enable Strict Mode Ashby will require this).
It is recommended to input your forward-looking hiring plan into Ashby (e.g. for the next quarter or next half year). You can input openings as Approved but not yet Open.
Ashby allows you to input openings ahead of opening the corresponding jobs (often you know you want to hire for a certain role, but it’s far enough out that you don’t have a job description yet and haven’t completed an intake meeting).
An opening should be marked as Open as soon as you actively start hiring for it. This allows you to track time to fill (the time from when a specific opening was opened to when it was filled with a hire) on the opening level.