Hiring Plan
Forward-looking narrative on next-period hiring priorities — target roles, sequence, sourcing strategy, and any unusual asks (executive search, specialized recruiter spend, location flexibility shifts). Anchors the board's understanding of where capacity is heading and what approvals or help are needed. Common pitfall: a stale plan that gets copy-pasted across quarters — the hiring plan should evolve with strategy shifts. Best practice is to lead with the 2–3 highest-priority hires and their justification, then a brief on backfills and bench-builds. — HR KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).
I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier)
No public third-party standard anchors this KPI yet, so I'mBoard authors and maintains the definition — transparently labeled as editorial tier. See the ontology methodology for the published vs editorial tier system and the back-attribution workstream.
Rogue ID: hr.hiring_plan
Type: Text
Domain: HR
Definition
Forward-looking narrative on next-period hiring priorities — target roles, sequence, sourcing strategy, and any unusual asks (executive search, specialized recruiter spend, location flexibility shifts). Anchors the board's understanding of where capacity is heading and what approvals or help are needed. Common pitfall: a stale plan that gets copy-pasted across quarters — the hiring plan should evolve with strategy shifts. Best practice is to lead with the 2–3 highest-priority hires and their justification, then a brief on backfills and bench-builds.
Why it matters
Converts hr.approved_headcount_budget (a number) into a board-relevant sequence (a story). Without this, board members lack the context to help with intros, validate strategic-role timing, or push back on questionable role specs.
How to interpret
Strong plans name specific roles, target start dates, and what board help would accelerate the hire. Pair with hr.key_openings for the structured priority list — narrative here, table there.
Related KPIs
hr.approved_headcount_budgethr.open_positionshr.key_openingshr.avg_days_to_fillhr.new_hires
Source
I'mBoard editorial — authored and maintained by I'mBoard, first published 2026-04-01. No third-party standard is cited for this KPI; when one emerges, the definition is back-attributed and promoted to the published tier (a minor version bump). Read the ontology methodology for the published vs editorial tier system, attribution rules, and dispute process.
Stage relevance
| Company stage | Priority |
|---|---|
| Pre-Seed | Recommended |
| Seed | Core |
| Series A | Core |
| Series B | Recommended |
| Series C+ | Recommended |
| Public | Recommended |
Suggested for stages: Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C+, Public.
Default owning functions
- HR
Machine-readable
- This KPI as JSON:
/api/ontology/hr/hiring_plan.json - All HR KPIs:
/api/ontology/hr.json - Full catalog:
/api/ontology/index.json
Net Headcount Change
Net change in employee headcount during the period — new hires minus (voluntary exits + terminations). The bottom-line growth-or-contraction number on the HR scorecard. Common pitfall: reporting net change without showing the gross-in / gross-out components — boards can't diagnose a flat net number caused by 5 hires and 5 exits the same way they'd diagnose a flat number from zero on each side. Best practice is to surface the four components (new hires, voluntary exits, terminations, net change) together. — HR KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).
In-jurisdiction headcount
Number of employees whose primary work location is inside the jurisdiction of a public funder at period end — the in-jurisdiction subset of `hr.total_headcount`. Reported by companies whose investor is accountable to a government mandate that is scoped to a geography: a US state fund (e.g. an SSBCI-funded state venture programme), a national programme, or an EU regional fund. For those funders, workforce inside the jurisdiction — not total headcount — is the figure the programme reports upward to its own funder. The jurisdiction itself is board-level context, not part of this definition: a board reporting to a Missouri fund labels this field "MO-based jobs", one reporting to an EU regional fund labels it for its region. STOCK, NOT FLOW: this is a point-in-time count, the in-jurisdiction analogue of `hr.total_headcount`, and it can never exceed it for the same period. It is NOT jobs created or retained over a period — those are separate flow metrics that a net change in this count cannot express (a company that hires 10 in-jurisdiction and loses 10 shows no change here while having created 10 jobs). Convention follows `hr.total_headcount` (FTE-equivalent, employees only, end-of-period) plus the primary-work-location test, which is the usual point of dispute: payroll-tax nexus, a registered address, and where a remote employee actually sits can all disagree. Fix the convention at the board level once and apply it consistently. — HR KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).