The Scenario
It is January. Your HRBP just got 25 new requisitions approved in the headcount plan. Each one lives in a Google Sheet — job title, department ID, location ID, target start date, and employment type — all set, all signed off. The question is how long it takes to get them into Ashby so recruiters can start pipeline work.
You've done this manually before. The memory is not fond.
The bad version:
- Open Ashby, navigate to Jobs, click "Create Job," fill in the title from row 1, select the department from the dropdown (the IDs in your sheet don't match the labels in the dropdown, so you're matching by memory), pick the location, set the employment type, save.
- Go back to the sheet, look at row 2. Back to Ashby.
- Around req 10, you realize you've been setting one location to "Remote - US" when the headcount plan says "Hybrid - NYC." You fix it and continue.
Twenty-five reqsitions at five minutes each is over two hours. Two hours that would have gone toward talking to candidates.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Google Sheet. It reads the headcount plan and creates the Ashby openings through a built-in integration — all 25 in one operation.
Create one Ashby opening for each row in this sheet using column A as the title, column B as the team ID, column C as the location ID, column D as the target hire date, and column E as the employment type.
SheetXAI reads each row, calls the Ashby jobs API, and writes the returned opening ID into column F. Rows that error show the reason instead.
What You Get
- Column F fills with Ashby opening IDs — one per created req.
- Rows that fail (invalid department ID, missing required field) show the exact error so you know what to fix.
- The sheet becomes a record linking each req to its Ashby ID.
- Recruiters can start sourcing before you close your laptop.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Department IDs in column B are department names, not IDs
For each row in this sheet, look up the Ashby department whose name matches column B and use its ID to create the opening. Use column A as the title, column C as the location ID, column D as the target hire date, and column E as the employment type. Write the opening ID into column F.
Some rows are backfills and need a flag set
Create one Ashby opening per row. For rows where column F says "Backfill", set the isBackfill flag to true. Use columns A through E for title, department, location, target start date, and employment type. Write the opening ID into column G.
Target hire dates in column D are in MM/DD/YYYY format
Before creating openings, convert all dates in column D from MM/DD/YYYY to ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD). Then create one Ashby opening per row using the converted date as the target hire date, and write the opening ID into column F.
Validate department and location IDs, then create all openings in one pass
For each row in this sheet, first verify that the department ID in column B and the location ID in column C exist in Ashby. If either is invalid, write the error into column F and skip. For valid rows, create the Ashby opening and write the opening ID into column F.
The last prompt saves the back-and-forth of creating 25 reqs and then discovering three had bad IDs — fixing errors on row 3 is much cheaper than fixing a created-but-wrong opening later.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your headcount plan spreadsheet, then ask it to push all approved reqs into Ashby in one operation. See also the spoke on bulk assigning hiring team members to jobs, or return to the Ashby overview.