Recruitment Plan Template: One Page Tied to Budget and Runway

A recruitment plan template is one page that lists every role you plan to hire, why, by when, at what cost, and who owns each search. The version below is built for a small company, so every row also carries a budget for the role and the months of runway left after the hire.

We build Talent Summoner, which finds and ranks candidates for each role in the plan. As of 3 October 2026 your first Role is free with no card, then US$29 per Role or US$59 a month for 10 Roles (pricing); the template works with or without it.

If you have an HR team with a yearly headcount process, your finance system already does this. If you are a founder or a small team planning the next few hires, read on.

The recruitment plan template

One row per role. The example rows are made up.

Role	Why now (the outcome)	Must-haves	Start by	Monthly cost	Hiring budget	Runway after hire	Owner	Status
Backend engineer	Ship the billing rebuild by Q1	Go, payments, 4+ years	2026-12-01	$11,000	$2,000	9.8 months	CTO	Sourcing
Customer success lead	Cut first-month churn	B2B SaaS, onboarding	2027-01-15	$7,500	$1,000	8.8 months	CEO	Approved
Sales executive	Open the UK market	Outbound, UK buyers	After the next raise	$9,000	$3,000	Not yet known	CEO	On hold

Monthly cost is the full cost of the person each month: salary plus taxes, benefits and equipment. Hiring budget is what you will spend to fill the role once: job ads, tools, an agency fee if you use one, and interview travel.

How to fill in the recruitment plan, column by column

Why now: one outcome the hire owns, in a sentence. If you can't write it, the role isn't ready.
Must-haves: three to five, no more. These become your search brief and your interview questions later.
Start by: the latest date the hire still makes sense, not the earliest you'd like.
Monthly cost: ask whoever runs payroll for the full figure, not just salary.
Hiring budget: list each cost you expect to pay once, then add them up.
Runway after hire: see the check below.
Owner: one person who runs the search and reports on it weekly.
Status: approved, sourcing, interviewing, offer, filled or on hold.

The runway check for each role

Runway is how many months your cash lasts at your current net burn, which is monthly spend minus monthly revenue. Each hire adds its monthly cost to that burn, so check the plan in the order you will hire.

A made-up example: you have $600,000 in the bank and a net burn of $50,000 a month, which is 12 months of runway.

Adding the $11,000 engineer takes net burn to $61,000 a month, and runway to about 9.8 months. Adding the $7,500 customer success lead after that takes runway to about 8.8 months; the one-off hiring budgets change either figure by about a day.

Write down the lowest runway your board or co-founders will accept before you plan. Any role that takes you below it waits for revenue or a raise, and that goes in its status.

Recruitment plan timeline

Plan the search backwards from the "start by" date. Notice periods, interviews and offers all take time, so the search starts well before the date in the plan.

Step	Typical owner	Our rough default
Brief agreed	Role owner	Before sourcing starts
Shortlist ready	Recruiter or founder	First one to two weeks
Interviews done	Interview panel	Next two to four weeks
Offer accepted	Role owner	One week after the last interview
Start date	New hire	After their notice period

Use your own past searches to adjust these. Our first 30 days of a founder hiring plan breaks the first month of one search into weekly steps.

When this recruitment plan template is wrong for you

More than about 15 hires a year: use a headcount plan in your finance or HR system, with approvals built in.
No cash forecast: build one with whoever does your accounts first; the runway column is only as good as that forecast.
A plan that changes every week: keep a dated log of changes; our headcount plan change log shows a format.

Where Talent Summoner fits in a recruitment plan

Talent Summoner is our product for candidate sourcing and candidate ranking. The facts below were checked on 3 October 2026.

Candidate sourcing takes one role brief and returns a ranked shortlist with plain-English reasoning. It searches LinkedIn, GitHub and other public sources, over 200 million profiles.

Candidate ranking scores up to 50 CVs you already have, free and with no account.

The trade-offs: it does not send paid LinkedIn InMail, keep an always-on pipeline between searches, or sync with an ATS today. The plan, the budget and the hiring decisions stay with you.

We re-check the product facts on this page every quarter.

What is an example of a recruitment plan?

A simple recruitment plan is one row per role with the reason for the hire, must-haves, a start-by date, the monthly cost, a hiring budget, the runway left after the hire, an owner and a status. For example, a backend engineer to ship a billing rebuild by Q1, owned by the CTO, currently sourcing.

What should a recruitment plan include?

A recruitment plan should include each role, why it is needed now, the must-have skills, the latest useful start date, the full monthly cost, the one-time hiring budget, an owner and a status. Small companies should also add the cash runway left after each hire.

Can I use this recruitment plan template in Excel or Google Sheets?

Yes. Copy the nine columns into a sheet, one row per role, and add a runway cell that divides your cash by your monthly net burn, including each new hire.

How often should a recruitment plan be updated?

Update the status column every week while searches are open. Re-check the budget and runway columns every month, or as soon as revenue or funding changes.

Keep the plan to one page, put a cost and an owner on every row, and re-check runway before each new search starts.