Hiring plan template

• 5 groups
• 32 tasks
• 4 milestones
• 36 dependencies
• About 13 weeks
• Updated October 26, 2026

We make Ganttile. The roles, durations and notice periods in this template are sample data for a made-up company, so replace them with your own.

Who is this hiring plan for?

Choose this hiring plan when you need to fill several roles in one quarter and estimate when each person can start. It suits hiring managers, founders and HR or recruiting teams responsible for several openings at once.

The sample hires three people: a support specialist, an account executive and a software developer. Each role has its own list, running from the job description to the start date, and all three depend on the same headcount approval. A recruitment plan template and a hiring plan template are the same thing here: a dated schedule for filling each role.

Is this an applicant tracking system?

No. Ganttile holds the hiring schedule; candidate names, CVs and interview notes belong in an applicant tracking system or a board. Ganttile does not post jobs, collect applications, store CVs, score candidates or send rejection emails. An applicant tracking system does those jobs, and for a small team a spreadsheet or a board often does them well enough. Breeze, made by the same team, has a candidate tracking board with all candidates and interview notes in one place.

What this chart does is answer the questions those tools cannot: when each role will be filled, what a slow sourcing week does to the start date, and whether three hires in one quarter fit next to everyone's other work. Ganttile is free, and the plan can be exported to Excel or Microsoft Project XML.

What happens in each list?

The sample has five groups: planning and approval, one for each of the three roles, and the onboarding hand-off. Each role follows the same sequence from its job description to its start date, with different durations.

Ganttile has no assignment field. Roles such as Hiring manager, Recruiter, Panel and HR appear at the front of task names instead. Replace those labels with names after copying the plan.

How do notice periods affect hiring dates?

Candidates who are in a job usually have to give notice before they can start a new one. In the sample the support specialist has two weeks and the other two have four, drawn as Wait bars between the offer and the start. They are often the longest bars in a hiring plan, and the ones a manager forgets when promising a start date.

Read the developer's list from the top and the whole chain is visible: approval in week one, a job description, more than three weeks of sourcing, screens, two interview rounds, references and an offer in week eight, then a month's notice. The first day is in week thirteen, almost twelve weeks after the approval, and the chart shows where each of those weeks goes.

Critical path is off by default and highlights correctly only with Hide weekends on. Turn both on under Settings and the developer's list is highlighted from the job description to the notice period. It is the chain that decides when the quarter's hiring is done.

Auto schedule is also off by default. Turn it on, then stretch a sourcing bar by a week and the screens, interviews, offer and start date all move with it.

Why are the three roles staggered?

The roles are staggered to spread sourcing, interviews and offers across different weeks. The developer is opened first because its sourcing takes longest. The support specialist runs alongside it, and the account executive opens a week later. As a result the first interviews land in weeks five, six and seven, one role at a time.

• The panel: every first-interview row also waits for the panels and scorecards, which the hiring manager sets up in week two.
• The hiring manager: two job descriptions in week two and one in week three is a realistic load next to a day job. Three in one week usually is not.
• HR: offers, references and onboarding prep fall in different weeks for each role.

When does onboarding start?

In the sample, onboarding preparation starts on the Monday after each accepted offer, during the notice period. HR has two to four weeks to sort out the contract, equipment, accounts and a buddy, so the new person arrives to a working laptop.

Each hand-off task points to the next plan: copy a new hire schedule for each hire and their first ninety days are already scheduled, starting two weeks before they arrive.

The last task is a short review of the quarter: time from approval to start for each role, where candidates dropped out, and which offers were turned down. Those numbers set the bars in next quarter's plan.

What should you change for your own hiring?

Replace the sample roles and durations with your openings, past hiring times and candidates' notice periods. Keep the approval and interview-panel dependencies when adapting each role.

1. Set the role count. Copy a role group for each extra opening, or delete one. Rename it after the job.
2. Use past hiring times. If your last developer took six weeks to source, make the bar six weeks. Past hires are better estimates than the sample.
3. Check notice periods. They depend on the country, the contract and the seniority. Ask in the first interview, then adjust the Wait bar.
4. Fit the interview rounds. Add a take-home task or a third round where you really use one, and keep the panel dependency on each first round.
5. Include the hiring managers. Invite them through the linked Breeze account, free, and they can view and edit the chart. Export a PDF for leadership.

Click Use template and the plan is copied into your account starting on the coming Monday, with the links, estimates and checklists in place. The preview opens at Month zoom, with the thirteen weeks as week columns.