People & HR

How to track open roles as Chief of Staff and Founder's Office

People & HRFor Chief of Staff and Founder's Office2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

You're the chief of staff at a 150-person company and nobody owns open-role tracking except you and a spreadsheet. Recruiting is split across a Google Sheet the Head of People updates inconsistently, Slack threads where hiring managers drop req updates, and whatever your ATS spits out in a weekly email. When the CEO asks 'where are we on the VP of Engineering search?' before a board meeting, you spend 25 minutes cross-referencing three sources to give a confident answer. Headcount planning for the board deck means manually reconciling what was approved in Q3 against what's actually open, filled, or on hold — every single time.

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People & HRFor Chief of Staff and Founder's Office2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live open-roles tracker that pulls from your ATS and Slack, shows status per role (open, in-process, offer-out, filled, on hold), hiring manager, target start date, and days-open — so you have a single source of truth before any exec conversation.

A weekly headcount digest that compares approved headcount (from your budget model) against actual open and filled roles, flagged by department, and delivered to your Slack or inbox without manual assembly.

A natural-language interface so you or any exec can ask 'how many engineering roles have been open more than 60 days?' and get an answer immediately, not a ticket to the Head of People.

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Project Management Task Manager

Data sources & config

Connect Greenhouse from Starch's integration catalog (the agent queries it live when the tracker loads). Starch syncs your Slack data on a schedule for channel and message context. Starch syncs your Google Calendar on a schedule to auto-tag roles tied to interview blocks. Connect Google Sheets from Starch's integration catalog to pull your approved headcount plan live. Notion pages with job descriptions or headcount approvals sync on a schedule.

Prompts to copy

Build me an open-roles tracker with columns for role title, department, hiring manager, date opened, current stage (sourcing / screening / interviewing / offer / filled / on hold), approved headcount slot (yes/no), and target start date. Pull open role data from Greenhouse via the integration catalog and let me manually add roles that aren't in the ATS yet.

Create a weekly automation that runs every Monday at 8am, counts open roles by department, flags any role open more than 45 days, compares totals against our approved headcount plan in the linked Google Sheet, and posts a summary to the #exec-team Slack channel.

Add a view that shows only roles where 'approved headcount slot' is yes but current stage is still sourcing or not started — these are the ones I need to escalate.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Greenhouse (or your ATS) from Starch's integration catalog — the agent will query open, closed, and in-progress roles live each time your tracker runs.

2 Connect Google Sheets from Starch's integration catalog and point Starch at the tab where your approved headcount plan lives — this becomes the budget baseline your tracker compares against.

3 Starch syncs your Slack data on a schedule; tell Starch which channels to monitor (e.g., #hiring, #people-ops) so status updates that happen in Slack can surface in your tracker.

4 Start with Starch's Project Management app as your base — it gives you kanban and list views out of the box. Tell Starch: 'Fork this into an open-roles tracker with columns for role title, department, hiring manager, stage, headcount-approved flag, days open, and target start date.'

5 Build the 'roles without owners' view first: 'Show me all roles where hiring manager is blank or last status update was more than 2 weeks ago.' This is what you'll pull up in every weekly leadership sync.

6 Set up the Monday morning digest automation: 'Every Monday at 8am, count open roles by department, calculate average days open per department, flag any role over 45 days, and post the summary to #exec-team Slack.'

7 Build an 'approved vs. open' reconciliation view: 'Compare roles marked as approved-headcount-slot against roles currently active in Greenhouse — show me the delta by department so I can see where we're under-hiring against plan.'

8 Use Task Manager to capture follow-up actions that fall out of the tracker — 'remind me to follow up with Sarah on the Head of Product search by Thursday' — so action items from your recruiting review don't fall into the void.

9 Before each board meeting or investor update, run: 'Give me a one-paragraph summary of current hiring status: total open roles, roles filled this quarter, roles at offer stage, and any critical roles open more than 60 days with no recent activity.'

10 When a role closes or goes on hold, update the stage in the tracker and Starch will automatically recalculate your open-headcount-vs-plan number so the board deck is always pulling current figures.

11 If your ATS is a less-common platform (e.g., a legacy applicant tracker with no direct catalog connector), Starch automates it through your browser — no API needed — so you're not blocked by integration gaps.

12 Share a read-only view of the tracker with your Head of People and each hiring manager so they can update their own rows directly, reducing the number of Slack messages you have to chase.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

Q2 2026 Headcount Review — May Board Prep

Sample numbers from a real run

Engineering open roles	8
Engineering roles open >45 days	3
Approved eng headcount not yet posted	2
Go-to-market open roles	5
GTM roles at offer stage	2
G&A open roles	3
Total open roles vs. 24 approved	16

It's the Wednesday before the May board meeting. The CEO wants a headcount slide. Normally this takes you 90 minutes: export from Greenhouse, open the Q2 headcount approval spreadsheet from the March board meeting, manually reconcile who's been backfilled, figure out which roles the CFO approved verbally in April but never made it into the sheet, and format it all into something presentable. This time, the tracker already shows 16 open roles against 24 approved slots — meaning 8 approved hires haven't been posted yet. Engineering has 3 roles open more than 45 days (the Staff ML Engineer, a Senior Backend role, and a DevOps lead), all flagged in red. You ask Starch: 'Summarize hiring status for the board deck: approved headcount, currently open, filled this quarter, at-risk roles by department.' It returns a clean paragraph and a table in under 30 seconds. You paste it into the board deck draft, adjust the framing, and move on to the next slide. The whole thing takes 8 minutes instead of 90.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Open roles vs. approved headcount by department (delta tracked weekly)

Average days-to-fill per role, broken down by department and seniority level

Number of approved headcount slots not yet posted (hiring plan execution rate)

Roles open >45 days with no stage change in the last 2 weeks (stalled searches)

Offer acceptance rate and quarterly attrition vs. new hires added (net headcount change)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

ATS-only tracking (Greenhouse / Lever / Ashby)

Your ATS tracks candidates well but doesn't reconcile against your approved headcount plan or surface cross-functional status in the exec-ready format you need for board prep — that last mile is still manual.

Google Sheets headcount tracker

Flexible and free, but it goes stale the moment one hiring manager stops updating their row, and it doesn't auto-flag stalled roles or post digests to Slack without significant formula work or a script someone has to maintain.

Notion hiring database

Starch syncs your Notion data on a schedule, so you can keep Notion as a record, but Notion's native database views don't run automations, send Slack digests, or query your ATS live — you'd still be the one moving data between systems.

Rippling or Workday headcount module

Powerful HRIS-level headcount reporting, but these tools are built for HR admins, not chief-of-staff-speed queries, and setup takes weeks with IT involvement — you need answers next Monday, not next quarter.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — project management, task manager all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What if our ATS isn't Greenhouse — we use Lever or a less common tool?

Lever and Greenhouse are both reachable from Starch's integration catalog, and the agent queries them live when your tracker runs. If you're on a more obscure ATS that doesn't have a direct catalog connector, Starch can automate it through your browser — no API needed — so you're not blocked. The tracker still works; the data just comes in via browser automation instead of a live API query.

Does Starch store our candidate data or headcount plan permanently?

Data from your ATS and Google Sheets is queried live from the integration catalog — it's not archived in Starch long-term. Your headcount plan data lives in your Google Sheet; Starch reads it on demand. If you need a persistent historical record of headcount snapshots (e.g., 'what did our open roles look like in January vs. April'), you'd want to run a weekly export and store those snapshots yourself. Starch is built for live data surfaces, not a long-horizon data warehouse.

Can hiring managers update their own role status without logging into Starch?

The cleanest path is giving hiring managers direct access to the Starch tracker — they can update stages, add notes, and flag issues without you chasing them in Slack. If they refuse to use another tool, you can set up an automation where Starch reads a shared Google Sheet (which they already update) and syncs changes into the tracker automatically.

Will this replace our ATS?

No, and it shouldn't. Your ATS owns candidate workflows — applications, scorecards, interview scheduling, offer letters. What Starch builds is the exec-facing layer: open-role status, headcount reconciliation, stalled-search alerts, and board-ready summaries. The two live side by side; Starch reads from your ATS rather than replacing it.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? We have an IT review process for new tools.

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If that's a hard requirement for your IT team, that's worth knowing upfront. It's on the roadmap, but we won't claim it before it's done.

How long does it take to set this up from scratch?

Connecting your ATS and Google Sheets takes about 10 minutes. Describing the tracker and automations to Starch in natural language takes another 15-20 minutes — you're typing prompts, not configuring forms. Most chiefs of staff have a working tracker and their first Monday digest scheduled within an hour of starting.