Postman is at a point of thoughtful, planned scaling that’s not reactionary. We have lofty goals, and in order to hire efficiently, the team determined that it was time to build structure, process, and data-driven decision-making. That’s where I come in. The goal is to go from hiring at a “jogging” pace to running pace!
We want to establish the right tools and framework to enable and train our recruiters to do what they do best—find amazing talent—without experiencing the administrative pains they've experienced before.
Where is all the administrative work?
One of the first things I noticed in my new role was that headcount plans weren’t in spreadsheets. I wasn’t bogged down by admin work or walking a tightrope between recruiting and finance.
It was a big change compared to previous roles, but it marked an important step in my journey as a RecOps professional: I could finally drive strategic impact on a daily basis!
In the past, headcount plans were always in a manual spreadsheet created by Finance. When I joined Postman, I was able to get out of spreadsheets and focus on helping Pavan, our Head of Recruiting, with strategic decisions, empowering recruiting managers to be more involved with capacity planning with their teams, and keeping a pulse on the efficiency of headcount as it comes down the funnel.
In this post, I’ll share my story of going from spreadsheet prisoner to strategic business partner and the challenges I can navigate with a real-time source of truth for headcount.
The hidden cost of manual headcount spreadsheets
Before joining Postman, I faced the same challenges all RecOps professionals know well. Chief among them was that I spent hours in spreadsheets just to manage basic hiring operations. I’ve seen firsthand how manual headcount management can hold back even the most strategic RecOps professionals.
In RecOps, we always say we're Excel experts, but we're not—at least not compared to Finance. For me, like many of my peers, the weekly grind of manual spreadsheet reconciliation was painful and time-consuming.
Between the manual work, weekly headcount alignment meetings with Finance, capacity planning meetings with Recruiting leadership, and requisition read-outs with recruiters, I needed more time to think strategically about how to tie these teams together around true headcount planning.
Spreadsheets are not scalable or automated!
The biggest issue I saw with spreadsheets was scalability. I can’t imagine doing hypergrowth planning on a spreadsheet—too many rows, too many changes, too much risk of human error.
I learned that the problem stems from fragmented data across multiple systems. For example, Postman uses Greenhouse and ChartHop, but these systems don’t integrate. The only way to consolidate headcount data was through manual work and spreadsheets.
Spreadsheets become outdated the moment they are created, which forces RecOps teams to chase real-time information constantly. Even more challenging is the inability to forecast and plan for changes effectively. For example, attrition is really hard to account for using spreadsheets, so you rely on educated guesses and convoluted excel formulas which is not the best approach.
Today, I don’t have to chase information or reconcile fragmented data in a spreadsheet. I have a single source of truth for headcount that automatically reconciles data from different systems in real-time, saving me at least two hours each week.
Inefficient (and anxious) weekly meetings with Finance
Another fundamental flaw in workforce planning that I no longer face at Postman.
I’d meet with the FP&A team weekly to go line by line in the headcount spreadsheet and make updates. Alignment meetings are good, but using the meeting to update cells in a spreadsheet isn’t. Every week felt like starting from scratch, with valuable time lost to tactical spreadsheet management.
Now, my meetings with Finance at Postman are monthly, and we don’t spend time going line-by-line through the headcount spreadsheet. We talk about talent strategy, goals, and overall philosophy because the tactical, operational work is done for us.
Getting RecOps and Finance to speak the same language
In the past, Finance, Recruiting, and hiring managers each had their own terminology when it came to headcount, which could sometimes create friction instead of partnership.
Without a unified system and common terminology, I would get caught in an endless cycle of translations and clarifications, trying to bridge the gap between all the stakeholders.
Though I never experienced real conflict, previous roles definitely brought anxiety about not being on the same page with Finance. In fact, I remember actively avoiding eye contact in the office so the headcount plan wouldn’t come up!
Looking back, I now recognize that we needed the right tools to collaborate effectively. It was a recipe for delayed decisions, unreliable hiring forecasts, and inefficiencies that impacted the entire company.
A shared platform for headcount also creates shared language so that teams can communicate and collaborate effectively.
Building a bridge between RecOps and Finance
Since joining Postman, my relationship with headcount management has completely changed. Compared to previous roles, I save around 10 hours per week on manual spreadsheet updates and full days of meeting prep time before facing our Finance team.
My relationship with Finance is also very different. Where I once avoided eye contact with Finance colleagues, I now engage confidently in strategic conversations about workforce planning. I have productive monthly meetings, reviewing real-time data that everyone trusts. I discuss capacity planning, headcount forecasts, and org structure because we don’t need to review line-by-line changes.
It shows what's possible when RecOps teams break free from spreadsheet dependency and engage in true collaboration.
So, what’s different about my role at Postman compared to previous positions? I have TeamOhana.
TeamOhana: The single source of headcount truth
TeamOhana's business impact is twofold. First, from a more traditional financial perspective, it provides more precise financial planning for headcount. Second, TeamOhana allows TA partners and leaders to have more strategic conversations with business leaders and HRBPs.
Historically speaking, business leaders and HRBPs are the driving function and key decision-makers for org design. TA teams are the executors of these plans: sourcing and finding talent to fill roles and headcount gaps as needed.
In the past, TA was told what we needed to hire after the fact, without providing input based on market research and the viability of the talent landscape. With TeamOhana, TA teams can now participate in strategic conversations and organizational mapping.
It allows us to look at the whole company’s headcount plan, track where we are with current roles, see what we have upcoming, align it with future headcount, and get ahead of hiring strategies through partnership with hiring managers and HRBPs.
If we didn't have TeamOhana, I'd need a tool similar to what TeamOhana provides without having to build it myself. Of course, this is doable and has been done manually—but at the cost of many hours and human labor!
Without TeamOhana, I could not do it all. We would need to hire another person to help me manage all of the strategic and tactical work. Otherwise, we would have to sacrifice one or the other… or I would never sleep.
If you’re ready to transform your RecOps function from spreadsheet-dependent to strategic partner, TeamOhana can help. Connect with me on LinkedIn if you have specific questions about how TeamOhana has impacted my world.
To learn more, check out their short demo and bite-sized product videos.
