Using Opening IDs in your ATS

Last updated: August 20, 2026

Overview

An opening ID is the identifier your ATS assigns to a single fillable position, and linking it to a headcount in TeamOhana is what lets offer and candidate data flow back automatically. Link the job alone and a recruiter has to reconcile every hire by hand.

This article is for Recruiters, Recruiting Leaders, and Admins who manage the connection between TeamOhana headcount and jobs in the ATS.

Prerequisites

  • A headcount marked Ready to Hire.

  • The Link job permission, or Create job in ATS if you plan to create the job from TeamOhana

  • A connected ATS for automatic syncing.

Openings vs. jobs

Most applicant tracking systems separate the job from the openings underneath it. The job is the role. An opening is one seat that one person can fill.

Take a Software Engineer job with ID 101. If you have three approved Software Engineer headcount for the year, your Talent team creates three openings under that job: 101-1, 101-2, and 101-3.

The distinction matters because of how offers attach. A job can carry several active offers at once. An opening can carry only one.

Watch: Compare a headcount linked to both a job and an opening against one linked to the job alone. View the walkthrough

Why you link both

Because an opening holds exactly one offer, linking it gives TeamOhana an unambiguous target. Candidate and offer details land on the right headcount in the Recruiting Workboard with no recruiter action.

Link only the job and TeamOhana pulls in every offer made against that job with no way to tell which one belongs to which headcount. Someone has to sort it out manually.

How to link a job and opening

  1. From the Recruiting Workboard or the headcount's Hiring Details, open a headcount marked Ready to Hire.

  2. Choose how to connect it:

    • Link an existing job from your ATS

    • Create a new job in your ATS from TeamOhana

  1. Once the job is linked, every opening under that job appears in a dropdown. Select the opening that corresponds to this specific headcount.

  2. Confirm the headcount stage has moved to In Progress. That change is your signal the link took.

Tip: During a parallel running period, when jobs already exist in your ATS and need to be connected to a new hiring plan, use bulk actions in the Recruiting Workboard instead of working one at a time. 

What happens after you link

The headcount moves to In Progress and recruiting data starts flowing. Timing depends on your ATS.

Greenhouse pulls jobs and openings on a 1.5 to 2 hour cycle. When an offer is marked accepted there, expect 30 minutes to an hour before the status updates in TeamOhana. Candidate name, offer compensation, and start date come across automatically.

Ashby pulls jobs and openings continuously, but offer sync depends on webhooks. With offer_updated and offer_deleted configured, offer changes reach TeamOhana in 30 minutes or less. Without them you wait for a full sync cycle.

Note: A newly linked job will not appear instantly. Give it a sync cycle before treating a missing link as a failure.

What breaks when openings go unused

Skipping the opening link has a specific chain of consequences.

TeamOhana has no way to match a candidate to a headcount, so the offer never attaches. When the new hire shows up in your HRIS, there is no linked offer to match them against, so their record lands in the Unclaimed tab in the Headcount module. Until someone reconciles it by hand, the headcount stays open in your hiring plan and your forecast counts a position that is already filled.

Multiply that across a hiring cycle and the plan stops reflecting reality.

Troubleshooting

The offer synced but attached to the wrong headcount

The job was linked without an opening. Link the correct opening, then reconcile the offer.

An accepted offer has not appeared in TeamOhana

Check the sync window first. If you are on Ashby and offers are consistently slow, confirm the offer_updated and offer_deleted webhooks are active.

A new hire is sitting in the Unclaimed tab

TeamOhana matches on email first, then falls back to name. A mismatch between the ATS offer and the HRIS record will strand the employee there. Link them to the correct headcount manually.

An opening is missing from the dropdown

Confirm the opening exists in the ATS and has synced. Openings created in the last sync cycle will not appear yet.