Requisition retrospective template: a short postmortem for every closed req
On this page
- When should you run one, and which form?
- Which numbers should you pull?
- The requisition retrospective template (full form)
- The short form
- Versions for the other outcomes
- The 30-minute agenda and ground rules
- A filled example
- How do retrospectives turn into real changes?
- How to use this template
- Questions people ask
A requisition retrospective, or req postmortem, is a 30-minute review held within two weeks of a requisition closing, whether it was filled, closed unfilled or canceled. The recruiter who owned the req runs it with the hiring manager: they compare what the intake agreed with what happened, find where the time went, and leave with one to three changes, each with an owner and a date. A short check on the hire around day 90 closes the loop. The template below has a short form for routine fills, a full form for searches that went wrong, and versions for unfilled reqs and agency job orders.
The numbers come from metrics our other guides define in detail: time to fill and time to hire, conversion rates by stage and quality of hire. This page is about using them on one requisition, while the details are still remembered.
When should you run one, and which form?
| Situation | Form | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Routine fill, close to plan, no surprises | Short form, filled by the recruiter, read by the hiring manager | 15 minutes |
| Search ran well over the planned time to fill | Full form and meeting | 30 minutes |
| Offer declined, or accepted then reneged | Full form and meeting | 30 minutes |
| Criteria changed mid-search | Full form and meeting | 30 minutes |
| Closed unfilled or canceled | Unfilled version | 30 minutes |
| First hire of its kind | Full form and meeting | 30 minutes |
| Agency job order, any outcome | Agency version, with the client | 20 minutes |
Decide the "planned" time to fill at intake and write it down. Without it, every search is judged against whoever is loudest about how long it took.
Which numbers should you pull?
Pull them before the meeting, from your applicant tracking system or tracker, so the meeting is spent on causes.
| Number | How to calculate it | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Time to fill | Req approved or opened to offer accepted, in days | How long the seat stayed empty |
| Time to hire | Hired candidate's first two-way contact to offer accepted | How fast the process moved once you had the person |
| Candidates by stage | Count reaching each stage: applied or sourced, screened, interviewed, finalist, offer | Where the funnel narrowed |
| Pass-through by stage | Candidates advancing from a stage ÷ candidates who reached it | Which stage rejected or lost most people |
| Withdrawals by stage | Candidates who withdrew, with the reason they gave | Whether you lost people rather than rejected them |
| Waiting days | Days between an interview and its scorecard, and between a decision and the next step | Time lost inside the team |
| Interviews per hire | Total interviews held ÷ hires | Interviewer load |
| Offers | Offers made, accepted, declined (with reasons) | Whether the close or the package failed |
| Source of finalists | Channel for each finalist and the hire | Which channels produced people worth meeting |
Compare each number with your own recent requisitions for the same kind of role, not with an industry figure. The question is whether this search was unusual for you, and why.
The requisition retrospective template (full form)
REQUISITION RETROSPECTIVE
Req: [title, ID] Hiring manager: [name] Recruiter: [name]
Outcome: [filled / closed unfilled / canceled] Date closed: [date]
Planned time to fill (set at intake): [days] Actual: [days]
Attendees: [names] Meeting date: [date]
1. INTAKE VERSUS REALITY
Must-haves agreed at intake: [list]
Changed during the search? [no / yes: what, when, why, who agreed]
Pay range at intake: [ ] Changed? [ ]
Working conditions (location, schedule) changed? [ ]
2. THE NUMBERS
Stage Reached Advanced Withdrew Median days in stage
[Applied/sourced] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
[Screen] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
[Interviews] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
[Final] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
[Offer] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
Interviews per hire: [ ] Interviewer hours (estimate): [ ]
Offers: [made / accepted / declined, reasons]
Source of finalists: [channel → number]
3. WHERE TIME WENT
Biggest delay: [stage, days, cause]
Waiting on feedback: [median days, worst case]
Waiting on approvals: [req, offer: days]
4. DECISION QUALITY
Scorecards submitted before the debrief: [x of y]
Must-haves each covered by at least one interviewer: [yes / gaps]
Disagreements and how they were settled: [ ]
5. CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE
Withdrawal reasons heard: [ ]
Complaints or praise received: [ ]
Survey results, if any: [ ]
6. KEEP / CHANGE / TRY
Keep: [what worked and should be repeated]
Change: [max 3, each with owner and date]
Try next time: [one experiment]
7. 90-DAY CHECK (fill in later)
Date: [ ] Hire's day-90 outcomes met? [ ]
Anything the interviews missed: [ ]The short form
REQ RETRO (SHORT): [title, ID] Outcome: [ ] Closed: [date]
Time to fill: [actual] vs [planned] days
Funnel: [sourced] → [screened] → [interviewed] → [offers] → [hired]
Biggest delay: [stage, days, cause]
Criteria changed mid-search? [no / yes: what]
One thing to repeat: [ ]
One thing to change: [ ], owner [ ], by [date]
90-day check booked for: [date]The short form takes about 15 minutes when the numbers are already in your tracker. Send it to the hiring manager and ask for corrections rather than holding a meeting.
Versions for the other outcomes
Closed unfilled or canceled
Replace sections 4 and 7 with these questions:
Why did it close? [budget / reorg / no suitable candidates / internal
fill / offer declined and not reopened]
Was this visible earlier? [the first signal, and when]
Candidates in process at closure: [number], all told by [date]? [ ]
If the role reopens: [what we'd change in the profile, range or plan]The second question matters most. A canceled req that showed warning signs for a month, such as a hiring manager who stopped attending interviews, is a lesson about when to pause, not just bad luck. The guide to prioritizing open requisitions covers the signals that a req should be paused.
Agency job order, with the client
JOB ORDER REVIEW: [client], [role] Outcome: [placed / lost / canceled]
Submittals: [number] Client interviews: [number] Offers: [number]
Submittal-to-interview: [interviews ÷ submittals]
Client feedback turnaround: [median days after submittal]
Where candidates were rejected, and the reasons the client gave: [ ]
What we'd ask at intake next time: [ ]
Placed candidate check-in: [date]Hold this one with the client contact where you can. It is the most natural moment to raise slow feedback or shifting requirements, and to agree what the next job order will look like.
The 30-minute agenda and ground rules
- Numbers, 5 minutes. The recruiter walks through section 2. No discussion of causes yet.
- Intake versus reality, 5 minutes. Did the search chase what was agreed?
- Where time went, 10 minutes. The biggest delay, and its cause, one level deeper than "busy".
- Keep, change, try, 10 minutes. End with no more than three changes, each with an owner and a date.
Three rules keep it useful:
- Process, not people. "Scorecards took five days" is a finding; "Sam is slow" is not. Name the step and the fix.
- Candidates by reference, not name. Write "finalist 2", not the person's name, and do not relitigate hiring decisions. The retrospective reviews the process that produced them.
- Facts first. Where the record cannot answer a question, write "not recorded" and treat that as a finding about what to capture next time.
A filled example
An invented short-form retrospective, for a role that ran over plan:
Req: Senior Accountant. Outcome: filled. Time to fill: 71 days against 45 planned.
Funnel: 140 applied or sourced → 22 screened → 8 interviewed → 2 offers → 1 hire.
Biggest delay: 19 days between the final interviews and the offer, made up of a debrief that could not be scheduled for 8 days and an offer approval that took 11, because the proposed salary was above the range set two years earlier.
Criteria changed mid-search: yes; a public accounting background was added after the first three interviews, which sent the search back to sourcing for two weeks.
Repeat: the 20-minute recruiter screen with three set questions, which every finalist passed.
Change: book the debrief when the final interviews are booked (owner: recruiter, from the next req); review the range before posting (owner: HR, by month end).
90-day check: booked.
Neither change is about sourcing, though "not enough candidates" was the team's first explanation. The numbers put most of the overrun after the candidates were found.
How do retrospectives turn into real changes?
- Keep one action log across requisitions, not one per req. A change that appears in three retrospectives is a process problem; one that appears once may be a one-off.
- Review the log quarterly, with whoever owns recruiting process, and close or escalate each item.
- Feed the actual numbers into planning. Your real time to fill by role type is what the next hiring plan should use; the hiring plan example for startups shows a plan revised when a hire took longer than expected.
- Fix the intake first. When criteria changed mid-search, the cheapest fix is usually a better intake conversation; see the intake meeting questions.
How to use this template
- At intake, record the planned time to fill and the must-haves, so there is something to compare against.
- When the req closes, choose the form from the table and pull the numbers within a week.
- Hold the meeting (or send the short form) within two weeks, and book the 90-day check the same day.
- Add every "change" to the shared action log with its owner and date.
- Store the retrospective with your process documents, not in candidate records, and keep candidate names out of it.
Questions people ask
What is a requisition retrospective?
A requisition retrospective, or req postmortem, is a short review held soon after a requisition closes, whether it was filled, closed unfilled or canceled. It compares what the intake agreed with what actually happened, finds where time was lost, and ends with one to three changes, each with an owner and a date.
When should you run a requisition postmortem?
Within two weeks of the req closing, while people remember the details, with a short check on the hire around day 90. Run the full version when the search ran well over plan, an offer was declined, the req closed unfilled or was canceled, the criteria changed mid-search, or the role was the first of its kind.
Who should attend a requisition retrospective?
The recruiter who owned the req runs it, and the hiring manager attends. Add the coordinator if scheduling was a problem and one or two interviewers if the debrief or scorecards were. Keep it small: more than five people turns a review into a status meeting.
What metrics belong in a req postmortem?
Time to fill and time to hire, the number of candidates at each stage and the pass-through between stages, interviews per hire, days spent waiting for feedback or approvals, offers made and accepted, and where the finalists came from. Use the medians and counts from this one requisition, and compare them with your own recent requisitions for the same kind of role.