What a job requisition is, and what the number on it means

A job requisition is the internal request that authorises one hire, either new headcount or a backfill. It names the role, the money behind it and who has to sign. Requisition itself means a formal, authoritative request. The requisition number is the employer's own code for that approved seat.

Job requisitions, job descriptions and job postings are 3 different documents

	Job requisition	Job description	Job posting
Who reads it	Internal approvers: HR, finance, a senior leader.	Internal teams, and often the candidate too.	The public.
What it answers	Are we allowed to hire this person, and with whose money.	What the job actually involves day to day.	Why you should apply for this.
Who writes it	The hiring manager, on a standard form.	The hiring manager, usually with HR.	A recruiter, often rewritten for the audience.
When it exists	First. Nothing else moves until it is approved.	Attached to the requisition, or written from it.	Only after approval.
Where it lives	The ATS or the HRIS, with a code on it.	Attached to the requisition and reused later.	Job boards and the careers site.
Does it carry money	Usually: the range, the headcount and the budget line behind them.	Sometimes a range, depending on the company.	A range where the law requires one.

What is a job requisition?

Job requisition The formal internal request that authorises a company to open one position, either new headcount or a backfill for someone who left. It carries what the role is, what it costs and who has approved it.

A manager loses an engineer and raises a requisition to replace them. HR checks the level and the range, finance checks the budget, a leader signs it, the system gives it a number, and only then does a posting go anywhere.

What requisition means outside HR

Strip the hiring context away and the word is older and broader. A requisition is an authoritative request or demand, and also the official form on which that request is made. There is a harder sense too, of property taken for public use by a public authority, which is why the word still sounds faintly bureaucratic to most ears.

That is why purchasing teams raise a purchase requisition for a thing and hiring teams raise a job requisition for a person. Same form, same logic: someone with a need asks someone with authority to release something. In recruiting the word is almost always shortened to req, as in an open req or a req number.

What a requisition number is, and where you see one

A short code the employer sets. The shape is the employer's choice, and a team abbreviation plus a number is common. Lever's documented example is ENG-9.

Which approved seat your application is attached to. Lever requires a requisitionCode on every requisition and calls it the unique HRIS requisition code.

On job ads, application confirmations and recruiter emails.

Greenhouse models headcount as openings that sit behind the public job, and each opening carries an opening_id such as OPENED-1.

That one job can hold several openings. Greenhouse notes the opening_id is defined by its users and can be changed, and that changing it may re-trigger approvals.

Inside the ATS, and often copied onto the posting.

Systems usually keep a readable code for humans and a separate internal id for software.

Greenhouse states its internal opening id is not the opening_id and is not mutable. The readable code can be renamed to match finance; the internal one has to survive that rename.

The readable one is the code a recruiter will quote at you.

The title written on the requisition itself. Lever stores a requisition name, such as Senior Software Engineer, Platform, separate from any posting.

How the employer files the role internally. That wording is often plainer than the posting headline, so the two titles can differ for the same approved seat.

Ask the recruiter which title an offer will use.

Why a recruiter asks for your requisition number when you email them about an application.

A single job ad can cover several openings in several locations. The number tells them which pipeline you are in without searching your name across all of them.

Keep it with the rest of your application notes.

What goes on a job requisition form

The requisition number or code, once the system has issued one
Requisition title and internal job code, not the advertised headline
Department and the cost centre the money comes from
Hiring manager, and who the role reports to
New headcount or a backfill, and whose seat it was
Employment type, hours, and permanent or fixed term
Location and work model
Salary range, currency and the total budget for the seat
Target start date
3 to 5 genuine must-haves, then the nice-to-haves separately

The job requisition process, step by step

The requisitor writes the business case The person raising it, the requisitor, says what breaks if the role stays empty, and whether this is a backfill or genuinely new headcount. That one distinction sets the whole approval path. "Backfill for the payments engineer who left in March."
HR checks the role against the job architecture Is this level real, does the title match how the company grades roles, and is the range the right band. This is where an inflated title gets pushed back down.
Finance checks the budget and the cost centre New headcount is tested against the plan. A backfill usually inherits the departed person's budget. It is common for this step to be the slow one, because it is the step with the money in it.
A senior approver signs For a backfill this can be a department head. For net-new headcount it usually goes higher. Lever's requisition object stores this as an approval with ordered steps and a status.
The system issues the number and the status goes open Only now does the requisition get its code and become a live seat that recruiters and the ATS can work against. The status flips from draft to open.
The description is attached and the posting goes out The job description is linked to the approved req, the recruiter writes the posting from it, and the pipeline starts. Everything a candidate ever sees begins at this step.

Open, on hold, closed, cancelled

These are not loose labels. They are literal values in the systems that hold the req. Lever documents a requisition status of draft, open, closed or onHold. Greenhouse accepts open or closed on an opening, and closing one takes a close reason, with "Hired - Backfill" appearing as an example in its own documentation.

So an open requisition means the money is approved and the seat is not filled yet, which is why recruiters talk about how many open reqs they are carrying. Closed can mean someone was hired, or it can mean the opening was shut without a hire. Cancelled usually means the headcount was pulled or the plan changed. Neither is a verdict on any candidate.

Before you set the range

Pay transparency rules bite at the requisition, not the posting. New York requires businesses with 4 or more employees to give a job description, a compensation range, and notice if a role is commission-based. Other states differ, so check your own labour department first.

A job requisition template you can copy

POSITION
Requisition number: [issued by the system, leave blank]
Requisition title: [internal title] / Job code: [code]
Department: [team]  Cost centre: [code]
Hiring manager: [name]  Reports to: [name]

TYPE
New headcount or backfill: [which, and whose seat if backfill]
Employment type: [permanent / fixed term / contract]
Hours: [full time / part time, weekly hours]
Location: [city or region]  Work model: [onsite / hybrid / remote]
Target start date: [date]

MONEY
Salary range: [min] to [max] [currency] per [year / hour]
Total budget for the seat: [figure, including any variable pay]
Openings on this requisition: [number]

THE ROLE
Business justification, 3 sentences: [what breaks without this hire]
Must have, 3 to 5 only: [1] [2] [3]
Nice to have: [list]
Job description attached: [link or file]

APPROVALS
HR: [name, date]   Finance: [name, date]
Senior approver: [name, date]
Status: [draft / open / on hold / closed]

Writing a requisition that clears approval

Say backfill or new headcount in the first line, because it decides who has to sign
Name what stops happening if the seat stays empty, in business terms
Keep the must-haves to 3 to 5, and put the rest under nice-to-have
Put the real range in, agreed with HR, rather than a placeholder you plan to revise

Do not

Padding the requirements list on the grounds that you may as well ask
Leaving the cost centre blank and letting finance chase you for it
Inflating the level to attract stronger applicants, which HR will correct anyway
Writing the posting before the number exists, then rewriting it after approval

The fields you argue over become the search

A one-line brief off an open role becomes structured filters, one group about the person and one about their current employer.

In The Cognitive a role holds the title, department, open positions and a status of Open, Closed or Draft. Sourcing runs off it: describe the hire in a sentence and it is parsed into filters, then every requirement is set as Must have, Prioritise or Preferred.

What requisition management actually means

Requisition management is the practice of holding every open req in one place with its status, its headcount and its approvals attached, so that nobody is recruiting against a seat that was quietly cancelled in a budget review. Recruitment requisition and talent requisition are the same object under different house styles.

Approval and budget stay in your HRIS. The Cognitive picks the work up after that: a role carrying the same Open, Closed or Draft vocabulary, sourcing built from that role, and an ATS integration that imports candidates and writes back stage changes, scores, notes and reports. The product names Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby. Start free at app.thecognitive.io/signup.

Keep reading

What is an ATS? · What is a hiring manager? · Job descriptions · The recruitment funnel

The short version

Requisition means a formal, authoritative request, and the form it is made on
A job requisition authorises one hire, new or backfill, before anything is posted
The req number is the employer's own code, not a national or public identifier
Open means approved and unfilled. Cancelled usually means the headcount was pulled
Req is the standard short form. Rec is not, and means something else entirely

Frequently asked questions

What does requisition mean?

A requisition is an authoritative or formal request or demand, and also the official form on which that request is made. As a verb, to requisition something is to make a formal request for it. The word also carries an older public-authority sense of property taken for public use, which is why it still sounds bureaucratic.

What is a job requisition?

It is the internal document that authorises one hire. It names the role, its purpose, the budget behind it, the reporting line and the approval path. A requisition covers either a brand new position or a backfill for a vacant one. Until it is approved, there is no seat to recruit against and nothing gets posted.

What is a requisition number?

It is the employer's own code for one approved opening, usually a department abbreviation plus a running number. Lever requires a requisitionCode on every requisition, with ENG-9 as its documented example, and describes it as the link between Lever and the company's own HRIS. It is internal to that company, not a national or public identifier.

What is a requisition ID?

It is the same idea as a requisition number, but some systems keep two. Greenhouse gives each opening an opening_id such as OPENED-1 that its users define and can change, alongside an internal id that is not mutable. The readable one is what appears on a job ad; the permanent one is what the software uses behind it.

Is it job rec or job req?

Req, short for requisition. It is the standard written abbreviation in recruiting, which is why you hear about open reqs and req numbers. Rec is not a short form of requisition and usually reads as recruitment, recruiter or record, so it will confuse anyone who works in an ATS all day.

What does an open requisition mean?

That the hire has been approved and funded and the seat is still empty. Open is a literal status value in the systems that hold requisitions: Lever documents draft, open, closed and onHold, and Greenhouse accepts open or closed on an opening. When recruiters say they are carrying 12 open reqs, they mean 12 approved seats still to fill.

What does it mean if a requisition is cancelled?

The opening was closed without anyone being hired into it. In practice that means the headcount was pulled, the budget moved or the plan changed. Greenhouse requires a close reason when an opening is closed, so the employer records why. It is an accounting event about the seat, not a judgement on anyone who applied.

What is requisition management?

It is the practice of tracking every requisition in one place: its status, how many openings it covers, how many have been filled and who approved it. Lever, for instance, stores headcount total and headcount hired on the requisition itself. Recruitment requisition and talent requisition are the same thing under different house styles.

Does the job requisition or the job description come first?

The requisition comes first in the approval sense, because nothing moves until the hire is authorised. In practice the description is often drafted alongside it and attached, since approvers want to see what the role actually is. The posting is always last, written from the approved requisition and the description together.

What does requisition title mean on a form?

It is the title on the requisition itself rather than the headline written for the job ad. Lever, for example, stores a requisition name such as Senior Software Engineer, Platform independently of any posting it is linked to. Internal wording is usually plainer, so the advertised title and the requisition title can differ for the same approved seat. If it matters to you, ask the recruiter which one an offer would use.

Explore: What is an ATS? · What is a hiring manager? · What is candidate sourcing? · List of applicant tracking systems