Allow time for the evaluator to review the foreign program, request any missing records, and issue a report, then time for the employer to confirm whether licensing applies. There is no fixed number of weeks that fits every foreign degree.
Plan around the evaluator's response, not a guess
Ask the evaluation service directly what their current review period looks like and build the hiring timeline around that answer rather than an assumed date. If licensing is required, add its own separate timeline, since board processes run independently of the TN review. Treat the earliest possible start date as provisional until both the credential and licensing questions have concrete answers.
Add one further step to that sequence, placed at the front: identify every item that depends on an outside institution and request all of them in the first week, regardless of the order a checklist suggests. An evaluation provider, a licensing board, a foreign university asked to verify a transcript, a professional body confirming standing — each has its own queue and none of them will treat this as urgent. Everything else in the plan can be accelerated with effort; these cannot.
Hypothetical example: an architect converting print-shop and studio premises needs a transcript verification from an institution abroad that answers in about two months, and requesting it immediately rather than after the evaluation is complete is the entire difference between a comfortable schedule and one dependent on nothing going wrong.