Job Requisitions Explained: An HR Practitioner’s Guide

The job requisition is a critical first step in recruiting, before a job is posted or a candidate is interviewed. When done right, it sets the foundation for a streamlined, compliant, and aligned hiring process.

If overlooked or poorly executed, job requisitions can become the “silent bottleneck” that stalls growth and creates chaos behind the scenes.

Here’s why creating and managing effective job requisitions matters:

• A clear, standardized requisition process keeps hiring aligned with headcount plans and budgets
• Well-structured requisitions reduce delays, prevent duplicate roles, and ensure every hire starts with the proper approvals
• Requisitions improve cross-functional collaboration between Human Resources (HR), Finance, and hiring managers, helping your teams move faster and with confidence.

What is a job requisition?

A job requisition is a formal internal request to hire for a new or replacement position. It is typically initiated by a hiring manager and routed through an approval process before recruitment begins.

The purpose of a job requisition

The primary purpose of a job requisition is to formally document the business case and authorization for a hire before recruitment activity begins. It ensures hiring decisions align with organizational priorities, budget constraints, and compliance requirements, reducing the risk of misaligned or unauthorized hiring.

Job requisition vs. job description

A job requisition is an internal document that justifies and authorizes a hire, including details like budget, reporting line, and business rationale.

A job description is an external or internal-facing role profile that outlines responsibilities, required skills, and expectations for candidates or employees.

They differ in purpose and audience: the requisition drives internal approval and resource allocation, while the description communicates the role itself to candidates and staff.

Job requisition vs. job posting

A job requisition is not visible to candidates and is used within the organization to start the hiring process. A job posting is the public-facing advertisement for the role, designed to attract and engage potential applicants on job boards, company career sites, or social media.

Job requisition vs. headcount plan

A headcount plan is a strategic, high-level workforce planning tool that outlines staffing needs over a given period. It is often tied to budgets and business growth forecasts.

A job requisition is tactical and role-specific, requesting to fill one position within that broader plan.

What are the key elements of a job requisition?

A clear and complete job requisition captures all the essential information needed to justify, approve, and launch the hiring process. It should include the following elements:

1. Role: Clearly define the position title, department, reporting line, and attach or reference a detailed job description. This ensures everyone involved understands exactly which role is being requested and how it fits within your organization’s structure
2. Justification: Provide a concise business case explaining why the role is needed, i.e., to replace a departing worker, meet growth goals, or support new projects. A strong justification helps secure buy-in from leadership and aligns the hire with strategic priorities
3. Budget: Outline the salary range, benefits, and any associated hiring costs, along with the cost center or funding source. Including budget details upfront aligns the request with financial constraints and avoids delays during approval
4. Approvals: Identify all required approvers, such as the hiring manager’s supervisor, HR, Finance, and relevant executives. Map the approval chain early to help streamline the process and prevent bottlenecks
5. Position details and logistics: Specify location (on-site, hybrid, remote), work schedule (full-time, part-time, contract), anticipated start date, and any job classification details, e.g, exempt/non-exempt. This helps set accurate expectations for candidates and ensures compliance with labor laws
6. Posting instructions: Indicate whether the role should be posted internally, externally, or both. Including this in the requisition keeps recruiters aligned on visibility and sourcing strategy

The job requisition process: A step-by-step framework

A standardized job requisition process ensures every hire starts with clear alignment, proper approvals, and the right details in place. Here’s a five-step framework:

1. Initiate: Identify the need for a role and write a job requisition request, usually done by the hiring manager. This sets the process in motion, capturing the basic reason for the hire and the expected timeframe (or sense of urgency, if warranted).
2. Justify: Link the request to your organization’s workforce plan, team objectives, or a specific backfill requirement. A strong business case helps secure stakeholder support and keeps hiring aligned with your strategic goals.
3. Define: Outline the role’s key details, including its job title, department, location, and type of employment (e.g., full-time, contractor, remote). Be clear to prevent confusion and ensure consistency when the role is posted.
4. Review and approve: Route the requisition to the necessary approvers, such as Finance, HR business partners, and leadership. The stakeholders verify budget availability, compliance, and strategic fit before any recruitment activity begins.
5. Post and activate: Once approved, upload the role to your organization’s ATS and publish on relevant job boards or internal channels. This final step launches the recruitment process and opens the role to candidates.

Who owns what in the requisition process

Clear ownership at each stage of the requisition process prevents delays, ensures accountability, and keeps hiring aligned with business priorities.

Each step has a primary owner, but a collaborative approach helps make sure the process runs smoothly and nothing is overlooked.

The following table shows the typical ownership model for each step of the job requisition process:

Common challenges when job requisitions go wrong

Job requisitions can go wrong if processes aren’t clear or consistently followed.

Here are some of the most common challenges HR practitioners face:

• Miscommunication across teams: Role scope, location, salary band, and other details can get lost in translation when the hiring managers, HR, and the finance department aren’t aligned. This often leads to back-and-forth corrections and a slower, more frustrating process
• Rogue hiring: Without a standardized job requisition process, managers sometimes push roles directly to recruiters or external partners. This can create compliance issues, undermine workforce planning, and make budgeting harder to track
• Budget overruns: Your organization may create a job or risk approving roles without clear funding if requisitions aren’t properly tied to cost centers and budgets. This may result in overspending on salaries or scrambling to cover unplanned costs later
• Poor candidate experience due to backend chaos: Disorganized requisitions may lead to HR and recruiters posting inconsistent job ads. Candidates will then encounter mixed signals, slow response times, or sudden changes in requirements, all of which may hurt your organization’s brand
• Compliance risk if approvals aren’t tracked (particularly globally): Failing to document approvals and compliance checks in multinational hiring can expose your organization to audits, penalties, or reputational damage. Global teams need a strong audit trail to ensure they’re meeting labor and data protection laws across jurisdictions

Let’s look at two scenarios to illustrate these challenges in action:

Scenario 1: The budget blind spot

A department manager urgently requests a senior engineer role, and HR fast-tracks the requisition without Finance’s full review.

Weeks later, it’s discovered that the role’s salary exceeds the approved budget by 15%, forcing leadership to freeze another critical hire to cover the overrun.

This scenario shows how skipping budget checks can disrupt workforce planning and lead to difficult trade-offs.

Scenario 2: The compliance miss in global hiring

A regional manager in Europe creates a requisition and pushes it live without routing it through HR and Legal.

Months later, the company faces regulatory scrutiny because the contract terms don’t comply with local labor laws, resulting in a fine and reputational damage.

This scenario illustrates how bypassing compliance reviews in global hiring can expose an organization to serious legal and financial consequences.

Job requisition template and examples

Companies include several essential fields to create a comprehensive job requisition form and ensure clarity for all stakeholders from the outset.

The following template includes fields that reflect best practices to make the process clear, auditable, and aligned with organizational needs:

To illustrate how this works in practice, consider the following examples demonstrating how the template can accommodate diverse industries, contexts (e.g., new hire vs. backfill), location, employment types, and specific hiring needs.

Example 1: Technology—Senior Software Engineer (new hire)

This example shows how the template applies to a new role in the tech industry:

Example 2: Healthcare—Clinical Trial Coordinatore (backfill)

This example demonstrates how the template works for a replacement role in healthcare:

Special considerations when making job requisitions for global, remote-first teams

When hiring across borders, a job requisition requires additional layers of clarity and compliance to ensure smooth approval and consistent practices for potential candidates worldwide.

Here are some key considerations:

• Local compliance: Each country has its own employment laws, and requisitions must specify whether roles will be filled via direct employment, contracts, or through Employer of Record (EOR) to avoid misclassification risks
• Location-specific budget approvals: Compensation expectations and payroll costs differ across regions, requiring requisitions to include regionally approved budgets to prevent funding gaps
• Aligning job architectures across geographies: Titles, levels, and pay bands should be standardized globally to ensure fairness and transparency, while still accommodating local market realities
• Requisition workflows for remote hires: Remote-first teams often need workflows that account for multiple approvers across time zones, with digital-first tools to keep processes efficient
• Data privacy and security requirements: Cross-border requisitions often involve sharing personal and salary data, making it critical to align with GDPR, CCPA, and other local privacy regulations when processing requisitions globally

How to integrate requisitions into your HR tech stack

Integrating job requisitions into your HR tech stack helps ensure the hiring process is scalable, compliant, efficient, and standardized across your organization.

Here are five key ways to do this:

1. Linking to headcounts in workforce planning tools: Connect requisitions directly to your organization’s workforce planning or financial systems. This ensures every role requested aligns with your approved headcount, budget, and long-term growth strategies
2. Syncing with your ATS for role creation: Once approved, requisitions can automatically generate new roles using your applicant tracking system (ATS). This reduces manual data entry, improves consistency across job postings, and accelerates the time to post
3. Workflow automation and audit trails: Automating approval workflows eliminates bottlenecks and creates clear records of who signed off at each stage. Audit trails are essential for regulated industries and global teams, providing transparency and compliance evidence
4. Integration with HRIS for worker lifecycle tracking: Link requisitions to your HR Information System (HRIS) to create a seamless handoff from pre-hire to onboarding and beyond. This provides accurate reporting on headcount, time-to-fill, and workforce costs throughout the worker lifecycle
5. Analytics and reporting dashboards: Capture requisition data in centralized dashboards to track trends such as hiring velocity, approval bottlenecks, or budget utilization. These insights support better decision-making and continuous improvement in hiring processes

With Deel’s global HR platform, you can do all this and more: integrate requisitions seamlessly with workforce planning, streamline approvals, and ensure compliance at every stage.

Simplify global hiring requisitions with Deel

Deel brings everything together to manage job requisitions globally, without the need to juggle spreadsheets, disconnected tools, and endless approval cycles.

With Deel Workforce Planning, you can:

• Build job architectures as the foundation: Create a consistent internal framework for roles, levels, and job families that connects requisitions, compensation bands, career paths, and workforce planning
• Streamline role requisition and approval workflows: Automate routing, collect documentation, and set triggers for approvals to keep the hiring process moving smoothly.
• Set budget guardrails by country: Access built-in compensation benchmarks to understand hiring costs across geographies and avoid budget overruns
• Visualize approved roles instantly: See new positions reflected directly in your org chart, making it clear how requisitions fit into your workforce structure
• Push jobs directly to your ATS: Send approved requisitions seamlessly into integrated applicant tracking systems, eliminating duplicate data entry
• Gain end-to-end visibility on headcount: Track active and planned hires across regions in a single dashboard, ensuring alignment between HR and Finance
• Plan scenarios and measure outcomes: Run hiring simulations (e.g., expansion into a new market) and compare them against actual filled positions and costs to refine future planning

Deel HR unifies requisitions with workforce planning, compensation management, talent management, and compliance in one platform. Deel helps your HR, Finance, and leadership teams move faster, stay aligned, and hire smarter.

Book a demo to discover how Deel can simplify global hiring at your organization and streamline your job requisition process.