Position management is one of those foundational people processes that’s easy to take for granted… until it’s broken. Done well, it gives HR, finance, and recruiting a shared source of truth for headcount planning, movement, and tracking. Done poorly, it creates a mess of false openings, untrustworthy data, and administrative overhead.

Below are three common failure modes we see when companies implement position management, along with ways to spot them early.

1. Letting outdated or dangling positions pile up

This is the most visible and most common problem. Over time, a company accumulates “dangling” positions that are no longer active but haven’t been closed out. These clutter your position data and make it harder to trust or act on.

There are a few typical sources:

• Post-termination roles that won’t be backfilled. These positions often sit open long after an employee has exited, even if there’s no intention to rehire.

• “On hold” positions from hiring freezes. Once hiring resumes, many of these roles are no longer relevant—but they still show as active.

• “Position hoarding” by managers. Some leaders keep unused roles as currency for future bargaining, even if they’re not on the near-term roadmap.

When these pile up, headcount reporting becomes noisy. Recruiting ends up chasing ghosts, finance sees mismatches in plan vs. actual, and HR loses visibility into true team needs.

How to spot it: Regularly audit for open positions with no associated req, or positions open >60 days without hiring activity. Cross-reference against your latest headcount plan. Consider implementing a rule to auto-close positions that have been open for too long to force internal stakeholders to either hire for or deliberately close out positions.

2. Blurry processes around internal mobility

Internal transfers are wonderful for organizational health and employee career development, but often expose gaps in how companies handle positions. Without a clear playbook, it’s easy to confuse when to open a new position vs. when to update an existing one.

Here are a few recurring edge cases:

• Competitive internal moves. If an internal candidate is applying alongside external ones, the cleanest path is to open a new position and evaluate all candidates against the same req.

• Team-wide reorgs. In these cases, you’re usually reshaping an existing team and can update current positions accordingly.

• Recruiting capacity planning. When roles aren’t clearly defined as new vs. backfill, recruiting teams can’t forecast load accurately.

The lack of clarity can also lead to internal friction—especially if employees perceive different treatment based on how their move was handled.

How to spot it: Audit a sample of recent internal moves. Were positions reused or duplicated? Did recruiting and HR follow the same process each time?

3. Data fields go stale or unused

Even when positions are technically maintained, their metadata often isn’t. Most HRIS platforms make it tedious to update fields like team, location, or job family—so they drift out of date over time.

A few common offenders:

• Team tagging. As teams grow and shift, tagging needs to reflect new ownership and structure.

• Level or compensation band. If a position is repurposed or upgraded, the old metadata may no longer apply.

• Recruiting ownership. When recruiters switch teams or priorities shift, position ownership isn’t always updated to reflect the change.

This impacts everything downstream: capacity planning, DEI reporting, finance forecasting, and more.

How to spot it: Pull a list of open positions and sort by last modified date. The older they are, the more likely their fields are inaccurate. You can also audit for null values in key fields that should always be populated.

Good position management is a team sport

Ultimately, position management isn’t just a system, it’s a shared discipline. The most effective companies treat positions as a first-class object, just like headcount or budget. They set clear rules, build lightweight workflows, and regularly sweep for inconsistencies.

If your team can’t answer “what positions are open right now?” with confidence, it’s a signal that something needs tightening.