Openings vs jobs
Many ATSs have the concept of 'openings,' which represent the individual positions that one person can fill. For example, if a company has an evergreen role that's always open on their job board, they may add a new opening every time they're actively looking to hire for that role.
Let's say the company has a Software Engineer role on their job board. The Software Engineer has the job ID 101. Going into a new year, the company has opened three headcount for Software Engineers, so the Talent team adds three openings to job ID 101: Opening ID 101-1, Opening ID 101-2, and Opening ID 101-3.
Each opening can only have one active offer associated with it at any given time, while a job can have multiple active offers at once.
Associating openings with headcount in TeamOhana
Part of the Talent team workflow is to link headcount in TeamOhana with their corresponding job and opening in the ATS.
As a best practice, we highly recommend that both the opening and the job are linked, and here's why:
Because each opening can only have one active offer at a time, when the opening is linked to the headcount and an offer is extended, TeamOhana will automatically pull in the candidate and offer information to the Recruiting Workboard without the recruiter needing to take any additional manual steps.
If the job, but not the opening, is linked to the headcount, TeamOhana will gather info on every single offer made against the job and will not automatically match the right candidate/offer with the headcount. Instead, the recruiter will need to manually make the link.
It's very easy to overlook the final manual step of linking the offer with the headcount if openings are not used, which leads to unclaimed employees, inaccurate forecasts, and an out of date hiring plan.
In short, openings should always be used in your ATS and they should always be linked with their headcount in TeamOhana.
Check out this video to see real life examples of headcount linked to both a job and an opening, vs headcount linked only to a job.