The budget is signed off. New roles are approved. And somewhere in the business, people are quietly assuming that good candidates will just appear. This is the moment to get ahead of that assumption, and build a hiring plan that actually holds up over the next 12 months.
The financial year reset is one of the most useful trigger points in the business calendar. New money, fresh priorities, and renewed appetite for growth. But without a clear recruitment strategy behind it, headcount approval has a habit of turning into a scramble by June.
Here are five things worth thinking about before you start posting job adverts.
Do you know what you actually need, or just what you think you need?
Budget approval and role clarity are not the same thing. It is surprisingly common for businesses to sign off a headcount number without having a clear picture of what each hire is supposed to do, or how success will be measured in year one.
Before you write a single job description, spend time with the hiring manager. What does this person need to achieve in their first six months? What does the team around them look like, and where are the gaps? What would make you look back in 12 months and say that hire was exactly right?
These conversations take less than an hour and they save weeks of wasted process later. Getting the brief right at the start is the single biggest factor in a successful hire.
How long is this actually going to take?
Most businesses underestimate how long recruitment takes. From brief to offer accepted, a permanent role at mid-management level will typically take anywhere from six to twelve weeks, sometimes longer in specialist or senior positions. Add in a notice period of one to three months, and a hire you kick off in May may not be in the building until September.
That is not a problem if you plan for it. It is a serious problem if you assume otherwise.
Map out when each person actually needs to be in post, then work backwards. If you need a hire to be operational by Q2, the brief needs to go out now. Leaving it until the vacancy becomes painful is a false economy.
Is this a permanent hire, or are you solving the wrong problem with a long-term fix?
Not every headcount need is best answered with a permanent appointment. Some business challenges are time-limited. A project ramp-up, a period of transition, a skills gap while you reshape a team. Hiring permanently into a short-term need can leave you with a structural problem once the pressure eases.
It is worth being honest about what you are solving for. Interim and contract hiring offers speed and flexibility that permanent recruitment cannot match. The best recruitment partners will help you think through which model serves the business, rather than defaulting to whichever type of role you have always hired before.
The answer will often be permanent. But asking the question is always worth doing.
Are your job descriptions doing the job they need to do?
A job description is a candidate's first impression of your business. For many, it is the only thing they will read before deciding whether to apply. And yet most job descriptions are written as internal documents, full of internal language, long lists of requirements, and almost nothing that would make a talented person feel genuinely excited about what is on offer.
Good candidates have options. They are reading your job description alongside three or four others on the same day. The businesses that attract the strongest shortlists are the ones that treat the job description as a piece of communication, not a compliance exercise.
Write for the person you are trying to attract. Be clear about what the role involves and honest about what it does not. Say something real about the team and the opportunity. If you are not sure how to get that balance right, a good recruiter will help you.
Are you using this moment to think beyond the immediate vacancy?
The start of a financial year is an opportunity to look further ahead than the roles in front of you. Where is the business heading over the next 12 months? Which parts of the team will feel the strain as you grow? Are there internal development needs that a new external hire could actually help address?
Workforce planning does not have to be a complex process. It can be as simple as a conversation between HR and the leadership team about where the pressure points are likely to be, and what you want the team to look like by this time next year.
The businesses that recruit most effectively treat hiring as an ongoing strategy rather than a reactive response. And the ones that build the best teams tend to have a consistent recruitment partner who understands the business well enough to help them think ahead, not just fill vacancies.
If you are planning your hiring for the year ahead and want a straightforward conversation about where to start, the team at Anne Corder Recruitment are here to help. Get in touch now.