> This is the markdown version of https://www.classet.ai/blog/100-day-plan-hiring > Learn more at https://www.classet.ai # Hiring in the 100-Day Plan: A Frontline Checklist for Acquisitions Most 100-day plans cover leadership, payroll and benefits, and leave frontline hiring to sort itself out. Here's a phase-by-phase checklist for keeping technician, driver and service seats filled after an acquisition closes. [![Paul Jones](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.basehub.com%2Fe0b5701f%2F6599306507912123f90f150a8bfaaf6c%2Fscreenshot-2026-01-28-at-10.53.16-am.png%3Fwidth%3D100%26height%3D100%26quality%3D100&w=96&q=75) Paul JonesHead of Growth at Classet ](/blog/authors/paul-jones) October 29, 2026 Guides & Insights, Hiring Tips ![Low-poly stacks of blocks rising in height, with one stack toppling under its load](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fblog%2Frecruiter-capacity-model.png&w=3840&q=75) Read a few 100-day plan templates for a newly acquired company and you'll see the same people list: keep the leadership team, line up payroll and benefits, sort out who reports to whom. Search firms write most of these templates, and they're written for the top of the org chart. The people who keep a service business running sit further down. Technicians, drivers, installers, guards and caregivers are the capacity the deal model is counting on. When one of those seats sits empty for six weeks, the company turns work away. A plan that never looks at frontline hiring is betting the seats fill themselves while every other part of the business changes. This checklist covers that gap. It's written for the platform HR lead or integration lead who owns hiring at the new brand, and for the operating partner who wants to know whether it's working. **TLDR:** - Find out in diligence how many frontline seats are open, how long they've been open, and who makes the first call to an applicant. - In the first 30 days, protect the hiring that already works and time how long applicants wait to hear back. - Days 31 to 60: fix the first call. That's where most of the delay sits, and it's the easiest step to standardize across brands. - Days 61 to 100: put the brand on the platform's reporting and decide what stays local. - Don't force a new ATS, a new careers page and a new screening script on a brand in the same quarter. ## Before close: put hiring in diligence HR due diligence usually stops at headcount, comp, benefits and legal exposure. Add five questions about frontline hiring. The answers set your baseline and tell you how big the problem is before you own it. 1. **How many frontline seats are open right now, and for how long?** Get it by role and location. "We're always hiring techs" isn't a number. 2. **Who makes the first call to an applicant, and when?** At many small and mid-size companies, it's a general manager or owner doing it between jobs. That person is about to get busier with integration work. 3. **Where do applicants come from?** Indeed, the careers page, referrals, a staffing agency. Note which sources cost money. 4. **What does the company spend on agency and finder's fees?** Those fees show up in SG&A, and they're the clearest sign the in-house process isn't keeping up. 5. **What system holds the applicants?** An ATS, a payroll system's recruiting module, a spreadsheet or an inbox. This decides how fast you can change anything. If you can, apply to one of the company's open roles yourself and time how long it takes to hear back. It takes ten minutes and tells you more than the data room will. ## Days 1–30: protect what works and get a baseline The first month is about not breaking anything. Integration pulls the people who hire into meetings about payroll, systems and reporting lines, and hiring is usually the first thing that slips. - **Name one owner for frontline hiring at the new brand.** Usually the person who did it before close. Tell them it still matters. - **Keep job postings live.** Don't pause postings while you decide on systems. An empty seat costs more than an untidy process. - **Time the first response.** For two weeks, track how long applicants wait between applying and a first real conversation (not an auto-reply). Do it for one or two high-volume roles. - **Count the after-hours applicants.** Check application timestamps. Frontline applicants often apply after their own shift, at night and on weekends. - **Price the open seats.** Use a margin-based [cost of vacancy model](/blog/cost-of-vacancy-calculator) for the roles that matter most. Keep the conservative number. - **Write down the brand's screening questions.** What the hiring manager asks on a first call: licenses, shift availability, travel radius, start date. You'll need these in month two. At the end of the month you should have three numbers for the brand: open seats multiplied by days open, time to first conversation, and the share of applicants who ever got a first conversation. ## Days 31–60: fix the first call Most of the time lost in frontline hiring sits between an application landing and someone picking up the phone. That step is also the easiest one to standardize across brands, because the questions differ but the process doesn't. - **Decide who makes first calls.** The options are the brand's hiring manager, the platform's central recruiters, or an AI phone screen that calls the moment someone applies and hands the brand a summary. - **Agree the brand's must-haves.** Turn the questions you wrote down in month one into a short list the brand signs off on. Keep the brand's name and voice in the script. Applicants applied to that company, not to the parent. - **Cover nights and weekends.** If first calls only happen during business hours, after-hours applicants wait until Monday. Most of the good ones won't. - **Keep a person on every hiring decision.** Standardize the first screen and leave the decision with the brand's hiring manager. - **Work with the system the brand already has.** If the brand moves to the platform's ATS later, the first-call process should move with it. - **Re-time the first response.** Compare it with the month-one baseline. ## Days 61–100: put the brand on the platform's view By now the brand should be hiring at least as well as it did before close. The last phase connects it to the rest of the group. - **Report the same numbers for every brand.** Open seats and days open, time to first conversation, first-interview completion, time to fill and agency spend, brand by brand. - **Set a target for the first response.** Same-day is a reasonable start for frontline roles. Track it like any other operating metric. - **Decide what stays local.** Interview questions, the hiring manager's final say and the brand name usually stay. The first-call process, reporting and vendor agreements usually move to the parent. - **Plan the ATS move, if there is one.** Schedule it after the first-call process is stable, not alongside it. - **Write the playbook for the next add-on.** Turn what you did here into the checklist for the next acquisition, so the next brand goes live in weeks, not a quarter. ## What not to change in the first 100 days Integration goes wrong when everything changes at once. Leave these alone until the brand is stable: - **The brand name in job postings and on the phone.** Local reputation is part of what you bought, and applicants respond to it. - **The hiring manager's final say.** They know the work and the crew. Take the first call off their plate, not the decision. - **A recruiting setup that's working.** If one brand fills its seats fast, copy its process to the others instead of replacing it. - **Three systems at once.** A new ATS, a new careers page and a new screening process in the same quarter is how a brand stops hiring for a month. ## Where Classet fits With Classet, the new brand keeps hiring while its people are in integration meetings, and the platform's central team takes on the brand without adding a recruiter for it. Classet handles the first call. Joy, our AI recruiter, phone-interviews applicants the moment they apply, nights and weekends included, in the brand's name and with the brand's questions. Each brand's team gets a summary, a transcript and a recording, and a person decides who moves forward. Each brand runs on its own account, and a Group Admin at the parent switches between them from one login. A newly acquired brand can be screening in about two weeks. Joy has run more than 500,000 AI interviews, and 88% of candidates rated the experience positively across [10,167 ratings](/land/candidate-experience). If you're working out a frontline hiring plan for a platform, see [how Classet works with PE-backed platforms](/land/portfolio-hiring), or read [why frontline hiring belongs in the value creation plan](/use-cases/private-equity). ## Common questions ### What should a 100-day plan include for hiring after an acquisition? Five things: a count of open frontline seats and how long they've been open, a named owner for hiring at the acquired company, a baseline for how long applicants wait to hear back, a decision on who makes first calls (including nights and weekends), and the same hiring metrics reported for every brand by day 100. Leave the brand name and the hiring manager's final say alone. ### What hiring questions belong in HR due diligence? Ask how many frontline seats are open and for how long, who makes the first call to an applicant and how quickly, where applicants come from, what the company spends on agency and finder's fees, and what system holds applicant data. If you can, apply to one of the company's open roles and time the response yourself. ### Should a platform centralize recruiting after an add-on acquisition? Centralize the first call and the reporting, and keep the decision local. A shared first-screen process and the same metrics for every brand let the parent see what's working. The brand's hiring manager should still decide who to hire, and applicants should still hear the brand they applied to. Move the brand to a shared ATS after the first-call process is stable, not at the same time. ### How do you keep frontline seats filled during an integration? Keep job postings live, name one person who owns hiring at the acquired company, and make sure first calls keep happening while that person is pulled into integration meetings. An AI phone screen that calls applicants the moment they apply covers nights and weekends and hands the brand a summary, so the hiring manager only spends time on candidates worth meeting. ### How fast can a newly acquired brand start using Classet? Most brands are live in about two weeks: a setup call with the brand's hiring lead, its interview questions and must-haves, and a connection to Indeed or its ATS. A brand that hires through Indeed can start sooner. Larger ATS integrations with a security review can take longer. [![Paul Jones](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.basehub.com%2Fe0b5701f%2F6599306507912123f90f150a8bfaaf6c%2Fscreenshot-2026-01-28-at-10.53.16-am.png%3Fwidth%3D100%26height%3D100%26quality%3D100&w=128&q=75) Paul Jones Head of Growth at Classet Paul comes from an operator background running an Alpine-owned company, and brings firsthand experience with the hiring challenges Classet was built to solve. He's driven by a belief that the right technology can make meaningful work more accessible. ](/blog/authors/paul-jones) Follow Classet in Google Add classet.ai as a preferred source and our hiring research is more likely to show up in your Top Stories and AI Overviews. 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