Backfill

Organisations that treat every vacancy identically usually require a fresh approval for a backfill, which spends two weeks of the notice period on paperwork for a headcount that was never removed from the budget. Pre-approving backfill within an agreed headcount, with an exception process for anything else, converts that delay into search time.

An Indian resignation typically comes with one to three months of notice, and longer at senior levels. That window is the whole advantage a backfill has over a growth hire, and it is routinely spent waiting.

• Open the role in the first week of the notice period, not after the exit interview.
• Have the leaver document the work while they are still doing it: recurring tasks with dates, access and system dependencies, in-flight items with their status, and the people outside the team who will need a new contact.
• Decide the coverage arrangement for the gap explicitly, and tell the people covering it when it ends. Temporary cover with no stated end becomes permanent by default.
• Ask the leaver what the role actually needs. A departing employee describes a job more accurately than the job description does, and has no reason left to protect it.
• Where the gap will exceed the search time, consider a fixed term or contract arrangement for the interim rather than distributing the work quietly across the team.

A resignation is the only moment when a role can be changed without anyone losing anything, and reposting the same job description is the default that wastes it.

• Should the role exist as it was? Work accumulates around a person, and some of what they did belongs elsewhere or has stopped mattering.
• Should it be at the same level? A role filled by someone who grew into it may be posted at their exit level rather than the level it actually requires.
• Is this an internal opportunity? Backfilling from inside develops someone and creates a second, more junior backfill, which is usually a better problem.
• Did the reason for leaving belong to the role? Where the exit was driven by pay, workload, the manager or the absence of progression, hiring a replacement into unchanged conditions buys a repeat of the same exit within a year.
• Is the engagement type still right? A role that has become seasonal or project-based may be better as a fixed term engagement than a permanent one.

The exit interview is the usual instrument for the fourth question and the least reliable one, since departing employees soften their reasons. Patterns across several exits in the same team are more informative than any single conversation.

• Forecast from attrition. A function of sixty with twenty per cent annual attrition needs twelve backfills a year before any growth, and that number belongs in the hiring plan.
• Track backfill separately from growth in reporting. Mixed together, a plan that looks delivered may be entirely backfill with no capacity added at all.
• Watch the chains. An internal move creates a vacancy behind it, and a three-step chain that is only approved one step at a time takes three times as long as it needs to.
• Time the concentration. Attrition clusters after appraisal and bonus payouts, so plan recruiter capacity for those months rather than distributing it evenly.
• Measure the gap, not just time to hire. Days the role was uncovered, including notice period and joining notice for the replacement, is what the team experienced.
• Keep the strong rejected candidates from the original search. The person who came second for this role six months ago is the obvious first call.