🔍 Articles in This Section

Please use the following list to see additional internal articles regarding Capacity Planner:

• (Internal) Capacity Planner Overview (📍you are here)

📖 Customer-facing Resources

* [Getting Started with Capacity Planner (Gem Help Center)](https://support.gem.com/hc/en-us/articles/15442925146775-Getting-Started-with-Capacity-Planner)
* [Insights and Charts (Gem Help Center)](https://support.gem.com/hc/en-us/articles/15445835362071-Insights-and-Charts)
* [Hiring and Recruiter Tables (Gem Help Center)](https://support.gem.com/hc/en-us/articles/15446051230487-Hiring-and-Recruiter-Tables)

Summary

• Summary of the product: In a Capacity Plan, you can create multiple versions of your base plan in one single place to easily compare and manage all the possibilities — no more “Plan_v19_final_actuallyFINAL”.
• Launch date: Aug 23’
• Category: Talent Compass

Eligibility

• Gem Admins only
• Must be on TC Advanced
• Included with Advanced product tier - no additional monetary cost
• Only available for Greenhouse (as of May 23’) ???
• NOTE: additional ATS parity can be discussed by request - please reach out to Lucia/team to start this conversation!

Why did we build it?

User problems:

1. Changing conditions AND responses — when capacity planning, customers not only have different scenarios/conditions but also have different responses. i.e. my recruiter capacity changes, I can delay/deprioritize HC in certain departments 1 of 3 ways, requiring 3 versions of my plan.
2. Responses are chained/related — responses are complicated. Choosing to modify one aspect of your plan has downstream effects that need to be captured holistically. i.e. if I reduce HC goals for engineering department, I also need to reduce HC for product, since these departments scale together, freeing up more resources for hiring in other areas of the business.
3. Getting buy-in / showing your work — TA makes a recommendation on how to hit a goal, like how to staff departments, or whether to bring on contingent workers (Credera, Carta, Wayfair) but it’s not trusted outside of TA because they don’t understand the thought process or impact/outcome of the recommendation. It’s hard for TA to bring others along the journey — the capacity story is hard to tell, especially when there are multiple options to consider.

Gem problems:

1. MVP completeness — managing unknowns, evaluating different hypotheticals, and reconciling it into a decision was a requirement customers had during original discovery, and is one of their core challenges with planning. This is only exacerbated by the current environment where there is even more uncertainty.
1. Note: this uncertainty is making some customers stop planning altogether (Flexport, Grammarly, Fandom), not just in Gem but really any tool. Is this because they don’t have a suitable solution to help them through this period, so they give up? Or is there really no problem to solve? Keep this risk in mind.
2. Our product in it’s current state feels half-baked.
2. Differentiator to overcome switching costs for holdouts — in order to drive adoption, we need to overcome the high switching costs of more mature customers not wanting to abandon their existing spreadsheet/workflows, unless our experience markedly better and provides a unique value they didn’t have before

Personas

Plan creators / owners

• TA leaders, rec ops

Plan consumers / reviewers

• HM/Biz, Finance, C-suite/board

Use Cases

1. Make a decision on the best strategy for a forward-looking plan
1. Role prioritization (should I hire in sales or tech with my available bandwidth)
2. Staffing (can I hit my goals with my current team, or do I need to hire / contract)
2. Log changes to an execution / in-progress plan to retro later
1. Headcount changes (how to react to a hiring spike in Sales in Q3 to meet my revenue goal)

Competition

• SaaS N/A
• Excel sheets - “Capacity_Plan_v19_Final_FINAL”

Functional Details

How does the product work?

1. On a capacity plan, create a new version off a base plan to make changes, explain decisions, and ultimately compare options side by side.

1. Include notes in the plan description, to explain your changes and think through decisions.

1. Update the rest of the plan normally, without any interference to your base plan. This allows you to seamlessly compare your options between versions of your plan.

1. Archive versions as they become obsolete.

Limitations/Gotchas?

• Changes to a specific version do not apply to other versions in the plan.
• You cannot change your base plan — versions are for points of comparison only, which you then need to manually update in your base plan, once decisions are accepted.

Future State

• Roadmap: Fast follows and any medium term (3-6 month) roadmap items that are actually planned/resourced
• Future ideas: concepts that we likely want to pursue at some point but have not committed to yet. We’d like to explore further in the future so keep us in the loop if prospects/customers are interested and potentially willing to partner on any of these items.
• “Merge” version to base plan
• “Diff” based view for easier comparison view

Functional Details

FINAL SCREENSHOTS SUBJECT TO CHANGE - PENDING FINAL POLISH PASS BEFORE LAUNCH

How does the product work?

https://www.figma.com/file/Tgwc7KVfcxfrxwtGeX3ZOS/Capacity-Planning-Calculator?type=design&node-id=2%3A175&t=jZ2xJsMS9GNlPtZu-1

https://www.figma.com/file/Tgwc7KVfcxfrxwtGeX3ZOS/Capacity-Planning-Calculator?type=design&node-id=2%3A175&t=jZ2xJsMS9GNlPtZu-1

Step 1: Find the Capacity Planner in the LH sidebar for Talent Compass Advanced customers.

This is only accessible by Gem Admins. Gem Admins can see all plans on their team. Only plan owners can see and edit their plans.

Step 2: Create a new plan by telling us the timeframe, how to organize the plan, and scope of the roles to hire for.

Organizing your plan

You can organize your plan by job dimensions, including:

1. Hiring manager
2. Department
3. Office

These are the same dimensions that are pulled from your ATS.

Or, create a custom grouping of the supported job dimensions above, to plan by:

1. Function - “EPD” custom grouping of department = eng, product, design
2. Region - “North America” custom grouping of office = US, Canada, Mexico

Filtering your plan

Filter by supported dimensions, like:

1. EMEA only plan - filter IS office = Poland, Dublin, Munich
2. Job type - filter IS NOT job type = intern

Adding recruiters

Choose recruiters from the dropdown, which we ingest from the ATS using recruiter (on job). Or, add placeholders of recruiters that aren’t yet in the ATS to plan for their expected future capacity in the timeframe of your plan.

After clicking “Finish”, arrive at the capacity planner empty state.

Step 3: Tell us how many hires your recruiters are equipped to make.

Per each recruiter, per month (or quarter, once supported), manually input their monthly capacity, aka their monthly ability to hire X people. This tells Gem what their available capacity , that recruiter’s total gas in the tank.

Manually input and track this number based on your own intuition / team benchmarks — you have full control. Or, let Gem help you out, or at least sanity check these numbers using Pipeline Analytics. This takes you to Pipeline Analytics, Activity view, pre-filtered by that recruiter with their historical activity broken down by month, to contextualize their historical capacity. Check/un-check the stages to display, to focus only on the context relevant to you.

Step 4: Actually make your hiring plan, and assign hiring goals to individual recruiters with available capacity.

Expand each department/office/hiring manager/custom grouping (hereafter referred to as “planning unit”) in your plan.

Assign recruiters supporting each planning unit in your plan. Repeat, until all recruiters have been assigned to their corresponding planning unit.

Input your hiring goal per department/office/hiring manager/custom grouping in your plan.

Distribute this hiring goal across the recruiters assigned to this planning unit using Gem’s automation. Or, manually distribute by hand across the plan timeframe.

An FYI on the capacity insight chips:

Step 5: Continue refining your plan by calibrating to actual hires made, and ensuring jobs are opened in the ATS to minimize process blockages.

See actual hires made in the planning unit, or by recruiter, to calibrate and course-correct any divergence between actuals and planned hires. Click into candidate details to view additional hire information to sanity check data.

View job openings associated with that planning unit, to ensure requisitions are being opened in the ATS in a timely manner.

Note: it’s expected that customers typically don’t have 100% of their roles open at the start of the hiring period in the ATS.

View job openings not supported for plans by custom groupings, as of May 23’.

Step 6: Monitor progress, and share updates to stakeholders on hiring in easy-to-digest charts and insights.

• Hiring gauge: see actual hires to date vs. hiring goal
• Line chart: see how these elements interact —
• Hiring goal: how many people I want to hire
• Capacity ceiling: how many people my recruiting teamcanhire
• Allocated capacity: how many hires Iexpect / planmy recruiting team to make
• Hiring goal insight: understand if you’re on track to hit your hiring goal
• you’ve reached your goal if hiredToDate >= Hiring goal
• you are on track if your totalExpectedHires ( hiresToDate + your allocated cap) is less than your hiring goal, but within 10% buffer of your hiring goal (aka hiringGoal > totalExpectedHires >= hiringGoal *.9)
• otherwise you are behind your plan
• Capacity surplus / gap: how many additional hires your recruiting team is over or under
• Recruiter allocation: how are your recruiters operating relative to their available capacity?
• The calculation under the hood — % of (allocated capacity / available capacity)
• Insight cards are not yet clickable, no drill-downs, as of May 23’

• Line chart can not be filtered yet, as of May 23’

Step 7: Capture hypotheticals / changes to plan using Scenarios.THIS IS CHANGING.

Capture recruiter capacity changes and/or headcount changes in plan. Toggle them on/off to apply them to the plan, and see the impact of these changes on the line chart.

Permissions

• Only Gem Admins have access to the Capacity Planner
• All Admins can view and edit plans, doesn’t need to be owner only

Limitations/Gotchas?

• All roles are “weighted” the same, no accounting for role complexity at this time

Future State

• Roadmap: Fast follows and any medium term (3-6 month) roadmap items that are actually planned/resourced
• Scenarios revamp

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hqx9ovjzkv2tkut/Scenarios%20revamp.mp4?dl=0

• Future ideas: concepts that we likely want to pursue at some point but have not committed to yet. We’d like to explore further in the future so keep us in the loop if prospects/customers are interested and potentially willing to partner on any of these items.
• Tie to value of $
• More insights + automation, pull in attrition / HRIS
• Incorporate pipeline / forecast calculator into planning
• Incorporate TTH / other metrics into planing
• Lots. Reach out to us directly if you hear something interesting!

• Summary
• Eligibility
• Why did we build it?
• Personas
• Use Cases
• Competition
• Functional Details
• How does the product work?
• Limitations/Gotchas?
• Future State
• Functional Details
• How does the product work?
• Step 1: Find the Capacity Planner in the LH sidebar for Talent Compass Advanced customers.
• Step 2: Create a new plan by telling us the timeframe, how to organize the plan, and scope of the roles to hire for.
• Step 3: Tell us how many hires your recruiters are equipped to make.
• Step 4: Actually make your hiring plan, and assign hiring goals to individual recruiters with available capacity.
• Step 5: Continue refining your plan by calibrating to actual hires made, and ensuring jobs are opened in the ATS to minimize process blockages.
• Step 6: Monitor progress, and share updates to stakeholders on hiring in easy-to-digest charts and insights.
• Step 7: Capture hypotheticals / changes to plan using Scenarios.THIS IS CHANGING.
• Permissions
• Limitations/Gotchas?
• Future State