Hiring rarely starts with a job posting. It starts with someone asking permission to hire, and that request usually lives in a spreadsheet, an email thread, or someone's head. Requisition approvals move it into Recruitee: you define what a hiring request has to contain, who needs to approve it, and whether a job can be published without one.
Note: Requisition approvals are available on the Optimize plan. You need the Administrator role to enable and configure the feature.
What requisition approvals are
A requisition is a formal request for a new hire. It captures the essentials — the number of openings, the budget, the reason for hiring — and routes them to whoever needs to sign off before recruitment starts.
A requisition is an internal document. It's never shared with candidates.
How a requisition differs from a job
The two are easy to confuse, so it's worth being precise:
| Requisition | Job |
Purpose | Asks permission to hire | Advertises the role |
Audience | Internal only — approvers and the hiring team | Candidates, on your careers site, job boards, or internally |
Created by | Usually the hiring manager, who gathers the requirements | Usually the recruiter |
Lifecycle | Approved once, then used to open one or more jobs | Editable at any time, including after publishing |
One requisition can back several jobs, and one job can draw on several requisitions. What links them is the number of openings: a requisition permits a set number of hires, and jobs assigned to it draw down that number.
Tip: Requisitions can be submitted months before a job goes live. If you plan headcount annually, you can get next year's roles approved now and open the jobs when you're ready.
Enable requisition approvals
Requisition approvals are switched off by default.
2. Click the toggle to enable Requisition approvals.
Once it's on, three configuration tabs appear — Approval flows, Requisition form, and Setup — and the rest of Recruitee changes too:
A Requisitions item appears in the left-hand navigation.
A new way to create jobs, From requisition, becomes available.
A Requisition section appears in the job editor.
Important: If you make requisitions required, scheduled auto-publications will fail for any job that doesn't have a requisition assigned. Jobs published before you enabled the feature aren't affected.
We recommend setting up the three tabs in this order: decide what needs approving (Requisition form), then who approves it (Approval flows), then when it's mandatory (Setup).
Build your requisition form
The requisition form decides which information every hiring request must contain. Go to the Requisition form tab to set it up.
Three fields are always present and always required:
Requisition title — what you're calling this request.
Number of openings — how many people this requisition permits you to hire.
Department — only required if you assign approval flows by department, in which case it determines which flow gets triggered.
You can then add fields from a dropdown. Anything you add becomes required on every requisition, so add only what approvers genuinely need to make a decision:
General context — background for approvers.
Priority - how urgent this hire is compared with others, so approvers can triage competing requests.
Recruiter — who'll own the resulting jobs. Whoever you pick is added to the requisition team automatically and gets notified, for example when it's approved.
Hiring manager — who's requesting the role. Usually the person creating the requisition.
Employment type - the kind of contract being requested, such as permanent, temporary, or freelance.
Category - the job category the role belongs to, which keeps requisitions grouped the same way as your jobs.
Required education - the minimum level of education the role calls for.
Required experience - the level or years of experience expected.
Hours per week - the contracted hours, so a part-time request doesn't get approved as though it were full-time.
Hiring budget - the budget available to fill the role.
Salary - the salary or range you're asking to offer.
Location - which office or location the role sits in.
Work model - whether the role is on-site, hybrid, or remote.
Reason for opening — new hire or replacement. Can differ per opening.
Explanation — extra detail for a specific opening.
Candidate's anticipated start date - when you need the new hire to start. Tells approvers and recruiters how much runway the process has.
Important: There's only one requisition form, and changes to it apply immediately to all drafts and all future requisitions. Requisitions that are already approved aren't affected.
Set up approval flows
An approval flow defines who approves a requisition and in what order. Go to the Approval flows tab.
1. Click + Add flow and give it a title.
2. For the first step, choose whether you need all assigned approvers or any approver. With any, the first person to approve releases the requisition from that step.
3. Click + under Assign approvers and add the people for this step.
4. If you want approvers to be able to swap themselves or a colleague out — for holidays, long absences, and the like — turn on Approvers can edit this step.
5. Click + Add approval step to add the next step, and repeat.
Approvers are notified step by step: everyone in step one is notified at once, and step two isn't notified until step one is complete.
Assign flows by department
You can pick a flow manually on each requisition, but assigning flows by department is the usual approach — the right approvers are then chosen automatically.
1. Turn on Assign departments to flows.
2. Pick a default flow. This one is used for any requisition with no department assigned.
3. Assign a flow to each department.
Note: With this setting on, every requisition must have a department. You can also set a default from the ellipsis (…) next to a flow's Edit button — choose Set as default flow.
Set your company-wide rules
Require requisitions
When you first enable the feature, requisitions are optional. Change this in the Setup tab by toggling Require requisitions.
With requisitions required, a job can't be published until an approved requisition is assigned to it.
Optional makes sense during a transition period, or if only part of your company works this way. Otherwise we recommend keeping requisitions required:
Every role's key details are confirmed by the right stakeholders before any money is spent, and that approved data flows straight into the job.
Reporting stays complete, because every job traces back to a request.
Nobody maintains a parallel spreadsheet of open headcount.
Auto-create jobs upon requisition approval
Turn on Auto-create jobs upon requisition approvals and Recruitee opens the job for you the moment a requisition clears its final approval step, using the details that were approved. Nobody has to remember to do it, and the job can't drift from what was signed off.
Tip: This pairs well with requiring requisitions. Together they close the loop: nothing gets advertised without approval, and nothing approved sits waiting for someone to notice.
Set permissions
Access to requisitions is controlled by hiring roles, under Settings > Recruitee > General > Hiring roles. Three permissions apply:
View requisitions — view, search, filter, group, follow, and leave notes on requisitions they're assigned to. If they're an approver, they can review approval requests.
View all existing requisition data — see every requisition, including ones they're not assigned to.
Manage requisitions — add, duplicate, edit, archive, and delete requisitions; fill in details, request approval, change the assigned flow, and send reminders to approvers; manage team members, notes, and files.
Administrators have all three automatically, and can see every requisition in the company.
A setup that works for most teams:
Hiring managers — View requisitions and Manage requisitions, since they create and edit them.
Approvers — View requisitions, plus View all requisitions if they need company-wide context.
Recruiters — often no requisition access at all. A recruiter with Manage jobs can still assign an approved requisition to a job.
Important: Notifications follow permissions. Someone without requisition permissions won't receive requisition notifications, even if they're on the team.
Set up notifications
Requisition notifications are set per user under Settings > Recruitee > My account > Notifications. They fall into four groups: general company-wide changes, requisition activity, job-related warnings (such as a job published with data that doesn't match its requisition), and mentions or assignments.
Tip: Two worth pointing your team at:
Requisitions are sent for approval or updated — keep this on so followers can track a request's progress.
Requisitions are reviewed — off by default. Hiring managers should turn it on to see each approver's decision as it happens.
FAQs
Can I have more than one requisition form?
Can I have more than one requisition form?
No. There's a single form, and it applies company-wide.
Will changing the form break requisitions that are in progress?
Will changing the form break requisitions that are in progress?
Drafts and future requisitions pick up the change immediately. Already-approved requisitions are untouched.
What happens to jobs that were published before we enabled this?
What happens to jobs that were published before we enabled this?
Nothing. They keep running, requisition or not.
Do recruiters need requisition permissions?
Do recruiters need requisition permissions?
Not to link an approved requisition to a job — Manage jobs is enough. They need requisition permissions only to open, edit, or create requisitions themselves.
Can we try this on one department first?
Can we try this on one department first?
Yes. Leave Require requisitions off, and only the teams you've briefed will use it.