The First 100 Days in the HR Seat

Reflections from seven years on the other side of the leap

The first time you sit in the HR seat as a career operator, there’s a strange quiet beat where two realizations arrive together:

You didn’t leave operations behind.
You just inherited the most levered part of the P&L.

I didn’t appreciate that in the moment. Back in 2018, I walked into HR thinking I was stepping into a new discipline. What I found instead was a system that behaved more like an uninstrumented supply chain than a people function: fragmented data, a hiring engine without clear signals, and headcount decisions happening faster than the underlying numbers could support.

Every operator who’s made this leap has their own version of that early “oh no… oh yes” feeling. I’ve now had seven years of conversations with people crossing that same bridge — MBAs, GM-track leaders, new CHROs, PE-backed operators — and the patterns are shockingly consistent.

This newsletter is my attempt to capture what I wish someone had handed me on day one: a practical, operator-minded plan for the first hundred days. It’s based on the things I actually did, the things I should’ve done sooner, and the things I’ve watched work in the highest-pressure environments: PE-backed firms, post-M&A integrations, and any company where headcount reality has quietly drifted away from financial truth.

I’ve also included links to a private headcount planning YouTube walkthrough and two templates you can copy: pre-filled and blank. The point of both is simple: HR can’t run like an operating system until you have finance-grade control of the data.

Watch the video walkthrough here
Click here for the blank template (click File->Make a copy for an editable version, or File->Download as to download an Excel template)
Click here for the pre-filled template

The core premise I wish I understood sooner

Headcount is capital. Full stop.

Once that clicked, everything else made more sense.

HR isn’t a service center. HR is a capital allocator for the most expensive line on the P&L.

And when the data underneath that capital is wrong — even slightly — everything downstream starts wobbling:

Forecasting gets conservative for the wrong reasons
Hiring slows because no one trusts the numbers
Attrition turns into storytelling
Executives assume HR can’t run a process

Seven years in, the same winning model shows up across nearly every successful HR rebuild I’ve seen:

Headcount control with finance-grade rigor
Three dashboards that create shared reality
HR run like an operating system, not a collection of heroic one-offs

Everything below is just the install sequence.

Days 1–10: stabilize and see the field

Nobody walks in and “fixes HR” in a week. Your job is simpler: stop the drift.

What I didn’t appreciate in my first ten days was how much the organization studies your early decisions. They watch what you stop, what you let slide, and how seriously you treat the numbers.

Here’s the sequence that consistently works.

Freeze uncontrolled openings (temporarily).
Not because you’re “anti-hiring,” but because you don’t yet know what you’re approving. Re-authorize roles through the value-creation plan or equivalent strategy.

Build a single source of truth.
Approved. Planned. Actual. Cash run-rate.
If those numbers don’t reconcile, you’re managing shadows. In my video/template, this starts by pulling raw HRIS exports and building a Golden Roster with clean config tables. The mechanics matter less than the principle: one version of the truth that HR, Finance, and Ops can all point to.

Lock decision rights and SLAs.
Who opens? Who backfills? Who upgrades? Who signs?
Shadow offers are the enemy when you’re trying to lock in headcount actuals. Kill them early.

This isn’t bureaucracy. This is adult supervision.

Days 10–20: ship dashboards that create shared reality

Here’s the part new CHROs overthink: the dashboards don’t need to be “ready.” They need to exist.

Build minimum viable dashboards by Friday. Improve weekly.

Dashboard 1: Headcount & Run-Rate
What leadership needs to avoid surprises.

Dashboard 2: The Hiring Engine
What TA and operators use to remove bottlenecks.

Dashboard 3: Retention & Productivity
What shows whether the people system is healthy.

These dashboards aren’t reporting artifacts. They’re how you reintroduce reality into a system that’s been operating on assumptions. I’ve covered each of these on my YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@recruitinganalytics

Weeks 3–6: create the operating cadence

Dashboards without cadence are just colorful regrets.

The cadence is where you turn numbers into decisions.

Launch a monthly Headcount Council (CHRO + FP&A + Ops).
Reconcile variances. Review scenarios. Approve strategic moves. This is where Finance learns HR can run the system.

Start tenure-based cohort curves.
Track exits, ramp, and performance by tenure window. It’s the quickest way to detect cracks in the hiring engine.

Move approvals from email to workflow.
Email feels fast. It’s actually slow, opaque, and political. Workflow restores consistency.

Weeks 6–10: tune the hiring engine

This is the point where most operators finally feel comfortable again, because throughput problems are familiar territory.

Dial in your guardrails:

Time-to-fill: target 35–60 days
Offer acceptance: 80%–92%

What moves these?

Cleaner candidate experience
For at least half of all roles, moving from requisition opened to first screen within 7 days
Bottleneck removal based on data, not folklore about “talent shortages”

One of the biggest surprises seven years ago was how often I found “shortages” that were really just decision latency or interview chaos.

Weeks 10–14: make it stick

This is the least glamorous work and also the most important.

Run a data hygiene sprint.
Unify job architecture, location tables, level definitions. “Other” is where headcount planning goes to die.

Enable managers.
Put dashboards in staff meetings. Follow up. Repeat. Dashboards don’t drive change — managers do.

Plan steady-state resourcing.
At minimum: People Analytics/HRIS, FP&A partner, HR Ops, CHRO/COS support. Without sustained ownership, the system degrades back into heroics. If your organization isn’t big enough to have these functions as standalone roles, find someone passionate about learning and make them the owner.

The overlooked superpower: bring your operator brain with you

When I transitioned, the thing that saved me wasn’t HR experience. It was everything before HR.

I treated recruiting like a flow system.
I rebuilt the intern offer process like a supply chain.
I redesigned the fall recruiting plan with basic operations logic.

Quality went up.
Chaos went down.
And the business suddenly felt Campus TA was “tightening the machine.”

This is the part I see people hesitate on. They assume they have to “learn HR” before they use their old toolkit. It’s the opposite. Your operator brain is your differentiator — use it early.

Benchmarks that actually matter

Benchmarks aren’t for shame spirals. They’re for action.

A couple that matter:

Monthly resignations: 0.9%–1.6%
Reconciliation accuracy: within ±1% to payroll/GL

If you can’t reconcile, you don’t have a system. You have a story.

Costs, trade-offs, ROI

You’re taking on some short-term friction to get long-term control.

There’s an upfront cost to cleaning the data, fixing the workflows, and getting everyone onto one operating cadence. For most companies, that’s somewhere between $30k and $150k, depending on the tools and the mess. After that, expect $15–$60 per employee per year in software and usually a 1–2 FTE lift in HR Ops or analytics.

The return should be obvious within a couple of cycles: faster fills, lower unexpected attrition, and forecasts that leadership actually trusts. If those don’t show up, the system isn’t wrong — something in the implementation is.

Objections you'll hear (and the honest answers)

“This slows hiring.”
Chaos is slow. Governance is fast.

“Data isn’t ready.”
It won’t be. Ship anyway.

“Managers won’t use it.”
Tie it to decisions. People follow consequences.

“Finance already has this.”
Reconcile to GL/payroll. If you can match them, HR becomes the operator of the roster.

Know when to course-correct

This isn’t dogma. It’s a method.

Adjust if:

Dashboards don’t reconcile within ±1% after two cycles
SLAs create bottlenecks without any quality lift
Attrition hot spots persist without action
VCP milestones aren’t connected to headcount decisions

If you see those signals, your system needs a tune.

Seven years in, I’ve learned this: the first 100 days aren’t about being perfect. They’re about rebuilding reality — then using it to make better decisions than the company has been able to make in a long while.

If you’re making this transition now, send me your top two bottlenecks. I’ll share my experience dealing with something similar.

Or just start simple:

The work is heavy, but the payoff is real. The moment you control headcount like capital, everything else starts lining up.

How I can help

Whether you want to build the system yourself or hand it off entirely, here’s how I support leaders fixing headcount chaos:

Do It Yourself
I teach the core playbooks publicly. You’ll find short, practical tutorials on my Recruiting Analytics YouTube channel, plus a self-paced course on Recruiter Capacity Planning if you want to level up your own models.

Done Together
For leaders who want a partner in the work, we take on a small number of retainers through Meander. Think of it as having an embedded operator helping you stand up clean headcount planning, forecasting, and analytics without adding headcount.

Done For You
If you need the whole machine rebuilt, we scope end-to-end projects designed to fix headcount chaos in 60 days. These are deep, hands-on engagements and we only run two at a time.

Drop me a note anytime at cmannion@meanderhq.com or connect through LinkedIn.