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Hiring the wrong person can cost your company up to 50% of the annual salary (Railsware internal stats). Yet, recruitment is not only about filling open seats, but rather about building the right team at the right time to drive your business forward.
That’s why every hire should start with a structured plan.
In this article, we’ll walk through how to build a scalable recruitment plan template in Jira using Smart Template and Smart Checklists, based on real-life hiring practices from modern product teams.
What Is a Recruitment Plan Template?
A recruitment plan template is a repeatable structure used to organize, assign, and track every step of the hiring process from receiving a hiring request to starting collecting applications and launching a job post.
A recruitment plan helps your HR team and hiring managers align on goals, timelines, and responsibilities, before a single job post goes live. But instead of using spreadsheets, docs, and scattered email threads, you can streamline communication and know the exact flow on how to prepare all parties for efficient recruitment inside Jira.
Think of it as your master checklist for hiring. It covers everything from:
- Role definition and hiring goals
- Alignment with internal stakeholders
- Salary research and recruitment budget checks
- Drafting clear job descriptions
- Setting up the interview process, outreach, and onboarding
- Planning promotion via job fairs, employee referrals, and recruitment events
Standardizing your recruitment process helps your team avoid missed steps, move faster, and focus on finding the best candidates from a variety of sources. A consistent flow also ensures every candidate goes through the same steps, aligned with your business needs and company culture, making it easier to hire the right person for the role.
Many teams rush into hiring without enough preparation or team alignment. As a result, they risk wasting time on the wrong candidates, or even hiring someone who’s not a good fit.
Smart Templates allow you to save this entire structure as a reusable template, while Smart Checklists let you break the hiring workflow down into clear, actionable steps.
Why Use a Recruiting Plan Template in Jira?
Using a recruitment plan template in Jira helps teams stay organized and aligned before the first candidate even applies. It brings structure to every part of the hiring setup—from initial intake to the job going live.
Here’s how it helps:
- Time and costs saving: All recruitment tasks, deadlines, and responsibilities are in one place. Smart Templates help recruiters know what to do at each step of the recruitment planning and not to spend additional time on searching for information from different sources
- Collaboration: HR teams, hiring managers, and other stakeholders can work together inside Jira. Everyone sees who’s responsible for what and when.
- Accountability: Each task in the recruitment workflow can be tracked with checklists and assigned to specific people. Missed steps are easy to catch.
- Efficiency: You don’t have to build the process from scratch every time. Recruitment plan template helps businesses define the exact requirements and follow the same process to make the right hire. You can reuse templates, standardize steps, and reduce time-to-fill.
- Consistency: Every candidate goes through the same high-quality hiring process. That means better candidate experience and a more consistent employer brand.
In the next section, we’ll walk through how to build your recruitment plan template in Jira using Smart Templates.
How to Build a Recruitment Plan Template in Jira
A recruitment plan template in Jira helps you standardize the way your company prepares for hiring. You can set up a structured sequence of tasks, responsibilities, and milestones using Smart Templates and Smart Checklists. That way, you don’t miss steps like finalizing the job description or aligning on the interview process.
Step 1: Create a Role-Specific Template
Each hiring plan starts with a single Jira issue created from a Smart Template. You can customize templates by role, department, or hiring manager.
Example structure:
Recruitment Plan for {{position}} at {{project}} at {{department}}
- Pre-planning for {{position}} at {{project}}
- Research & market calibration for {{position}}
- {{position}} discovery and validation
- Design of the hiring process for {{position}}
- Applicant tracking system setup for {{position}}
- Sourcing & recruitment strategy for {{position}}
In order to create such a template from scratch you can follow this guide and copy paste the issue names below to repeat this hierarchy for your purposes. You can easily edit this template later if required.
Add Smart Variables to make your template flexible:
- {{position}} – position name
- {{department}} – team or functional area
- {{project}} – specific project for which you’re hiring
You can use a parent issue (Recruitment Plan) and then structure all related tasks below it. This structure helps break down work between recruiters, talent sources, hiring managers, and hiring team.
Pro tip: You can create one master template and adapt it for each new vacancy in just a few clicks.
Step 2: Break Down the Recruitment Plan Template with Smart Checklists
Once the recruitment plan issue is created from a Smart Template, you can break the workflow into clear steps using Smart Checklists. Each checklist item reflects a real task that hiring managers, recruiters, or team members are responsible for. The structure is based on real hiring workflows, so nothing slips through the cracks.
Break the process into phases: discovery, research, materials, setup, sourcing. Use Smart Checklist to list each step involved. Refer to real internal workflows (like the Job Requisition Form, hiring team collaboration, and sourcing strategy).
Assign owners, link documentation, and add due dates to drive accountability. You can also include subtasks or linked issues for specific actions like preparing a test task or launching a LinkedIn post.
Here’s how the checklists might look inside the recruitment plan template in Jira:
Recruitment Plan Template
## Pre-Planning for {{position}} at {{project}}
- Validate the hiring request & add it to the hiring plan
- Share the Job requisition form to collect the full information about the role
- Assign the responsible recruiter
- Send Job Requisition Form to hiring manager
## Research & Market Calibration for {{position}}
- Collect a filled requisition form from the Hiring Manager
- Research similar roles and market benchmarks (e.g., skills, salaries, role namings)
- Validate role fit and requirements based on market data
- Gather role posting analytics
- Understand where such roles are usually posted
- Investigate whether people typically apply from posting of this role
- Determine the need for sourcing specialist for this role
## {{position}} Discovery & Validation
- Prepare Position Discovery file with key role details based on the Job Requisition Form and conducted research:
Hard & soft skills
Competencies
Role requirement
Position goals
Team/Function
Hiring Location(s)
Salary range
Hiring Stages
- Schedule call with hiring manager and hiring team
- Finalize role profile and responsibilities during call
- Define required hiring materials (job description, technical task, etc.)
- Assign responsible team members for each step
- Confirm who will participate in interviews
- Define interview stages:
Intro call
Technical task
Collaboration interview
Final interview with hiring manager
## Hiring Process Design for {{position}}
- Align on interview scope, sequence, and expectations
- Assign responsibilities to interviewers
- Finalize required hiring materials (test tasks, interview questions, intro script) with the hiring team
## Applicant Tracking System Setup for {{position}}
- Create position in ATS (e.g., Greenhouse)
- Upload hiring stages, checklist and add hiring team
- Create emails templates based on recruitment flow and materials
- Add requisition details and approvals
- Review with the hiring manager
## Sourcing & Recruitment Strategy for {{position}}
- Define sourcing approach
- Align on posting locations and internal budget approvals
- Post the job on the company’s careers page
- Make an external posting on job boards
- Request marketing support (LinkedIn post, internal newsletter, ads campaign)
- Create and distribute referral form to internal team
Additionally you can:
Assign tasks to specific people in the hiring team. This might include:
- Test task creation
- Interview scope definition
- HR intro call planning
- Decision-making responsibilities
Reuse template across departments with smart variables
Your recruitment template can stay flexible with dynamic fields like:
- {{job_title}}
- {{team}}
- {{hiring_manager}}
- {{location}}
- {{start_date}}
This makes the template scalable across your hiring needs, whether you’re growing your support team or hiring a new head of product.
Step 3: Automate Recurring Actions
Use Jira Automation to:
- Trigger recruitment plan creation when a new vacancy is added
- Notify team members about checklist assignments
- Send reminders for pending actions
- Prevent issue transitions if required steps are incomplete
This eliminates the need for manual follow-ups and keeps the hiring process on track.
Once your recruitment template is ready, automation helps you streamline the process and reduce manual coordination.
Step 4: Track and Iterate
Once your template is in use, review how it performs:
- Are all required steps being completed?
- Are any steps regularly missed or misunderstood?
- How long does each phase take?
You can optimize the template by adjusting checklist items, deadlines, or automation rules based on feedback and hiring metrics.
Conclusion
An effective recruitment plan lays the foundation for every successful hire. When your recruitment process is clear, consistent, and centralized, hiring becomes faster, smoother, and less error-prone.
By building your recruitment plan template in Jira, you can:
- Align hiring managers, recruiters, and stakeholders from day one
- Document key decisions, responsibilities, and deadlines
- Automate repetitive steps and minimize delays
- Track and optimize your hiring pipeline with real-time visibility
Smart Templates and Smart Checklists help you bring order to a complex, cross-functional process, so every new role gets the attention it deserves.
FAQ: Recruiting Plan Template in Jira
What is a recruiting plan template used for?
It helps you organize and track the preparation phase of your hiring process, from defining the role and responsibilities to setting up your sourcing strategy and timelines.
Can I customize the template for different departments or roles?
Yes. You can create templates for specific job families (engineering, marketing, support, etc.) and adjust them with Smart Variables like {{job_title}} or {{department}} to match your team’s structure.
Can I use Jira to assign tasks to the hiring team?
Absolutely. Smart Checklists let you split responsibilities across HR, hiring managers, and interviewers, making the entire workflow clear and accountable.
Can I connect this process to our Applicant Tracking System (ATS)?
Yes. Many companies set up Jira to coordinate the internal process, then integrate with tools like Greenhouse or Lever for candidate-facing stages.
Can I track hiring metrics like time to fill?
You can track key dates (e.g., role approved, job posted, sourcing started) using Jira fields and visualize progress on dashboards. This helps you build internal benchmarks and refine your recruitment strategy.
