Grow your business / Operator

How to Build a Yearly Hiring Plan for a Contracting Company

Contractor Lane editorial guidance. Reviewed October 12, 2026. Examples are illustrative, not industry benchmarks.

Short answer: a yearly hiring plan lists the seats you expect to add or replace in the next twelve months, the month each person needs to be working, the revenue or workload that has to be true before you hire, and the date recruiting has to start. It turns hiring from a scramble after someone quits into a calendar you work every week.

Companies stuck at the same size often hire one person a year, right after a crisis. Companies that grow through the wall plan the year's hires in January, recruit all year and still adjust as conditions change.

Step 1: start from the work, not the headcount

Write next year's revenue goal, then translate it into field hours. Divide planned revenue for each type of work by your average revenue per sold hour for that work. Divide those sold hours by the sold hours one technician realistically produces in a year, using your own history, not a target from a seminar.

Illustration only: service revenue goal $2.4 million. Average revenue per sold hour from your own records $300. That is 8,000 sold hours. If your technicians actually averaged 1,100 sold hours each last year after vacations, training, callbacks and slow weeks, you need about 7.3 producing technicians. If you have six, you need at least one more, plus coverage for anyone you expect to lose.

Step 2: plan for turnover you cannot see yet

People leave, retire, get injured or turn out to be a poor fit. Look at your last two or three years: how many field and office people left each year? Use that number, not an optimistic guess. If two people a year usually leave, your plan needs two replacement hires on top of growth hires. Owners who plan only for growth spend the year behind.

Step 3: add the support and leadership seats the growth creates

More technicians create more calls to answer, more jobs to dispatch, more parts to stock, more invoices and more people to lead. For every few field hires, check your seat chart. Which office, warehouse or leadership seat will break first? Put that hire on the plan with a trigger, for example: "Hire a dispatcher separate from CSR when daily jobs exceed what one person handles without missed calls for four straight weeks."

Step 4: set a trigger and a start date for each hire

Each row in the plan should have:

• Seat: service technician, helper, CSR, dispatcher, estimator, lead technician, bookkeeper.
• Reason: growth, replacement, or bottleneck.
• Trigger: the condition that must be true, such as a booked-out schedule for a set number of weeks, a revenue run rate, or a role currently held by the owner.
• Needed by: the month the person should be working.
• Recruiting starts: work backward from the needed-by date. Good field candidates often take months to find. Add time for notice periods, a working interview and onboarding.
• Budget check: the revenue level at which the seat fits your labor budget. See can you afford another hire.
• Owner of the search: one name.

Step 5: time hires around your season

Hire before the busy season, not during it. A technician who starts in the middle of the rush gets thrown on calls without training, makes mistakes and leaves. For a heating-heavy company the hire may need to be working in late summer. For a company that peaks in spring, hire in winter, when you also have time to train. Look at your own monthly revenue history to find the right months.

Step 6: make recruiting a standing job

Recruiting is a seat. In a smaller company it may be one hour a week of the owner's time or part of an office manager's role, but it needs a name and a time block. That person keeps the job posting current, keeps a list of promising people you met who were not ready, asks current staff for referrals, keeps in touch with trade schools and apprenticeship programs, and runs the interview process. A steady pipeline lets you hire the right person instead of the available one.

Washington notes for postings and screening:

• Employers with 15 or more employees must include the wage scale or salary range, or the fixed wage, plus a general description of benefits and other compensation in each job posting (RCW 49.58.110).
• Under the Fair Chance Act you may not ask about or check criminal history until after you initially determine the applicant is otherwise qualified, and you may not advertise in a way that excludes people with criminal records (RCW 49.94.010).
• In initial hiring, you generally may not reject someone for off-duty cannabis use or for a pre-employment test that found only nonpsychoactive cannabis metabolites. There are exceptions, including a safety sensitive position you identified before the person applied (RCW 49.44.240).

Step 7: review the plan monthly

Put the plan on the agenda of your owner meeting once a month. Check each row: is the trigger met, is recruiting on track, did anything change? Move dates when the business changes, but write down why. A plan you never revisit becomes a wish list.

A simple plan for one year

Fictional example:

• February: replacement technician (one technician plans to retire in spring). Recruiting started in November.
• April: helper with warehouse duties. Trigger: owner still on installs more than one day a week in March.
• July: growth technician. Trigger: board booked out for more than a set number of days for six straight weeks and revenue run rate above the budget line.
• September: dispatcher separate from CSR. Trigger: the office person misses calls while dispatching during the busy months.
• Ongoing: one hour every Tuesday for recruiting, owned by the office manager.

Use the free next hire planner to decide which row comes first. Then prepare the interview with the scorecard and paid working interview and the first months with the 30-60-90 day plan.