Compare business needs
Rate each requirement for impact, urgency, risk if unfilled and hiring readiness. Adjust the weights to reflect the priorities of the programme you are discussing.
Hiring Priorities Planner
Hiring Priorities Planner
Decide what comes first, what depends on it and what the budget can support.
Several vacancies can feel equally urgent when each sits with a different hiring manager. A shared view of business impact, timing, operational risk and readiness helps HR and leadership teams discuss the programme as a whole.
Use this free hiring priorities planner to assess proposed roles, record prerequisite appointments and explore an indicative sequence within an optional annual budget. Whether you are building a commodity trading desk, strengthening a brokerage or expanding a support function, it gives you a consistent framework for discussing what should happen next.
Turn hiring needs into a sequence
Build a hiring sequence
- Set your company, currency and relative weights. Presets are illustrative; adapt them to your business.
- Add a role and rate impact, urgency, risk and readiness from 1 to 5. A blank annual cost means unknown, not free.
- Select saved prerequisite roles. Loops are rejected. On-hold roles cannot enter the sequence and block their dependants.
- Optionally enable the annual budget limit. Grouped hires are selected together; costs are annual estimates, not phased spending.
- Compare scored order with the suggested sequence. Save your plan file before leaving or download the Excel snapshot.
Tab skips field help icons. Alt + H opens help for a focused field; Escape closes it. Hover or tap a question mark for guidance.
Set your priorities Weights are editable; scores reflect your judgement
Annual cost estimates are not phased cash flows. The budget tests which eligible rows fit the selected sequence; it does not optimise the allocation.
Suggested sequence0 roles0 hires
Known annual cost in sequenceNo rows selected
Budget limitOptional
Add a hiring requirement
Assess roles, not candidates. Use one row for identical hires with the same ratings and prerequisites.
Explore the priorities
Add a hiring requirement, or load the fictional example to explore a commodity business growing its team.
Dependencies can change the sequence even when another role has a higher score. A sequence is a planning prompt, not a set of dates or an instruction to recruit.
All hiring requirements
| Role / department | Hires | Score / 100 | Annual estimate | Prerequisites | Planning result | Action |
|---|
How the score, dependencies and budget work
Rate each role from 1 to 5. The weighted score maps 1 to 0 and 5 to 100, using your relative weights. Presets are illustrative starting points, not validated recommendations. A high score reflects your assessment, not a verified business outcome. Ties use entry order.
The sequence selects the highest-scored eligible active role whose prerequisites have already been selected. Roles on hold are excluded and block their dependants. With the budget limit enabled, unknown-cost rows and rows exceeding the remaining budget are excluded; other eligible roles may follow. This is a transparent heuristic, not an optimal funding solution. Grouped hires are selected together.
Costs are loaded annual estimates per hire multiplied by headcount. With no budget limit, an unknown-cost row may enter the sequence, but the cost total includes known amounts only. A zero budget is a real limit when the checkbox is on. Update assumptions, dependencies and judgement as your business plans develop.
What You Can Prioritise
Identify dependencies
Record where one appointment needs to precede another. Keep on-hold requirements visible while recognising their effect on roles that depend on them.
Apply a budget constraint
Explore an indicative sequence using annual loaded costs and an optional budget limit. Review what fits, what remains uncosted and which requirements are still waiting.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is the hiring priority score calculated?
Each role is rated from one to five for business impact, urgency, risk if unfilled and hiring readiness. The tool applies your chosen relative weights to produce a score from zero to 100. The score reflects your entered judgement; it is not an independent assessment of business value.
Does the highest-scoring role always come first?
Not necessarily. The suggested sequence also considers whether the role is active, whether its prerequisites have already been selected and whether it fits within an enabled budget limit. The scored-order view lets you see the ratings separately from those constraints.
How do prerequisite roles work?
A prerequisite means that another saved role should appear earlier in the suggested sequence. It does not mean that person has already been hired. On-hold or unselected prerequisites can leave dependent roles waiting. Circular dependencies are rejected.
What happens when a cost is unknown or the budget is too small?
With the budget limit enabled, unknown-cost rows and rows that exceed the remaining budget are excluded from the suggested sequence. Other eligible roles may still follow. Without the limit, eligible uncosted roles can appear, but totals include known costs only. A blank cost is different from an explicit zero.
Is this the optimal hiring order?
No. It uses a transparent planning method that selects the highest-scoring eligible role at each step. It does not search every possible combination, assign hiring dates or optimise the business. Use the result as a basis for discussion and adjust it as circumstances change.
Can I use it for candidate ranking or change the plan in Excel?
The tool is for prioritising roles, not ranking candidates. The Excel report records the assessment and suggested sequence. Its weighted-score formulas can recalculate, but spreadsheet edits do not rerun dependency checks or budget allocation. Make planning changes in the web tool and export again.
Can I save the plan and discuss delivery with Imperium?
Yes. Save a JSON plan file to reopen in this tool and download the Excel snapshot for internal discussion. There is no automatic saving. Imperium can help test the requirements against the relevant talent market and discuss Retained Search or a Search Partnership to deliver the hiring programme.
A strong team is not built in a rush. It is built in the right order.
Turn Hiring Priorities Into a Deliverable Search Plan
Test the sequence against the talent market, the brief and the business need.
A priority list is a starting point. The availability of relevant people, realistic compensation and the time required to secure them can all change how the programme should be approached.
Imperium works with commodity and financial markets businesses to research the market and deliver agreed appointments. For a programme whose requirements will develop over time, a Search Partnership allows the research and priorities to evolve with your business.
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