Delivering the placement · Lesson 18 of 18 · 7 min
The placement is not finished on the start date. You have a contractual promise running, a fee that is not fully yours yet, and a window in which a small unspoken problem becomes a departure.
These two subjects belong in one lesson because they are the same thing from opposite ends. The guarantee is what you owe if the placement fails. The check-in schedule is what stops it failing.
Agencies routinely negotiate the first hard and then never do the second, which is an odd way round: the clause protects the fee, but the phone calls protect the client relationship, the candidate, and the referrals that follow from both.
Contact each side separately at every stage. This is the part that does the work — people say things to you that they will not say to each other, and the gap between the two accounts is the earliest warning you will get.
Day one — both sides, briefly
A message to the candidate in the morning and a short one to the client at the end of the day. You are checking that the person arrived, that somebody was expecting them, and that the basics existed — a desk, a login, a name badge, a supervisor. A surprising share of bad starts are administrative, and they are all fixable on day one and poisonous by day five.
End of week one — the real conversation
Separately, with each. Ask the candidate whether the job is what was described, and the client whether the person is what was described. Any gap between the two answers is the thing that will end this placement, and it is at its most solvable now.
Day 30 — is it working
By now both sides have formed a view and neither will volunteer a mild concern unprompted. Ask directly: what is going well, what is not, is there anything you would change. Mild concerns are coachable; the same concern at day 70 has become a decision.
Day 60 — confirm and widen
If it is going well, this is the natural moment to ask the client what else is coming up, and to ask the candidate who else they know. A placement performing well at day 60 is the single strongest reference you have, and it is perishable — people move on and memories fade.
Day 90 — close the loop
Confirm the placement has stuck, and mark the end of the guarantee window in your own records. Ask for a written reference or a testimonial while the client is pleased. On a contract desk, this is also when the extension conversation should already be running.
Check yourself
A placement leaves in week six. Your terms say the guarantee is a replacement search rather than a refund. Why is that the better position to have written?
At day 30 a hiring manager tells you the placement is "fine, settling in". What should you do?
The most important sentence in the clause is the one naming the remedy. A replacement search commits you to more work, which you can schedule and control. A refund hands back money you have already spent earning, frequently for reasons that had nothing to do with your candidate.
Replacement-only is a common and defensible position, and most clients accept it without argument. Offer it as your standard, and treat any refund as a concession you make deliberately rather than a default you inherited from a template.
Replacement, not refund
State plainly that the remedy is a replacement search at no additional fee. The work you did is not returnable, and a refund clause converts a service business into one that carries the client’s hiring risk for free. Many clients accept replacement-only without comment because it is a common position.
A defined window
Thirty, sixty and ninety days are all commonly used, and longer windows appear on senior or retained searches where six months is not unusual. Longer is a genuine selling point — offer it deliberately and price it, rather than conceding it late in a negotiation.
Invoice paid in full as a condition
The guarantee applies only if your fee has been paid, and paid on terms. Without this line, a client can withhold payment and claim the guarantee simultaneously, which is not a position you want to argue from.
Prompt written notice
The client must tell you within a defined number of days of the person leaving. This is not bureaucracy — a departure reported four months later is impossible to verify and impossible to remedy.
Reasons that are excluded
Redundancy, restructure, role elimination, change of duties, sale of the business, or the client failing to provide what was agreed. None of those is a failed placement, and your clause should say so. This is the exclusion that gets used most.
One replacement, and a time limit on it
The obligation is to run one replacement search, within a defined period. An open-ended promise to keep replacing indefinitely is an unbounded liability attached to a one-off fee.
A longer guarantee is one of the few things you can offer a hesitant client that costs nothing unless you were going to fail anyway. It is a genuine answer to “we have been burned by agencies before”, and it is far better value to give away than a discount on your fee.
The condition is that you offer it deliberately — as a trade, early, for exclusivity or a committed process — rather than conceding it at the end of a negotiation you were already losing. The fee conversation in the perm fees lesson is the same principle applied to price.
Move immediately, and treat it as a live search rather than an obligation being discharged. Two reasons. The client is currently deciding whether you were a mistake, and a fast, well-run replacement is more persuasive than the original placement was. And a replacement search you drag out is a search you are running for free for longer.
Before starting, find out honestly why the first one failed. If the answer is something about the role or the manager rather than the person, you are about to repeat it — and that conversation is easier to have while you are the party doing them a favour.
On a contract desk the same window exists in a different shape: the first weeks of an assignment decide whether it extends, and the extension conversation should already be running by day 90. The check-ins are the same; what they protect is the recurring margin rather than a one-off fee.
Model, economics, setup, niche, clients, delivery, and now aftercare. What is left is doing it consistently for longer than feels reasonable — the part no course covers, because there is nothing to explain.
From here: the business development guide for keeping the pipeline alive once the desk is running, and the glossary for every term used across these lessons.
Key takeaways
A defined window after a placement starts during which you will put things right at no extra fee if the person leaves or is let go. Thirty, sixty and ninety days are all commonly used in permanent recruitment, and longer periods — six months and occasionally beyond — appear on senior or retained searches. What matters more than the length is the remedy: whether you are promising a replacement search, a refund, or something in between.
A replacement search is the stronger position and a common one in the market. The work you did — sourcing, screening, running the process — cannot be returned when the placement ends, so a refund means carrying the client’s hiring risk at your own cost, often for reasons outside your control. A replacement commits you to more work, which you can schedule and control. Some agencies offer a pro-rata rebate as a fallback where a replacement genuinely is not possible; if you do, make it a sliding scale and cap it.
The remedy, stated as replacement rather than refund. A defined window. A condition that your invoice has been paid in full and on terms. A requirement that the client notifies you in writing within a set number of days. Exclusions for departures that are not failed placements — redundancy, restructure, role elimination, changed duties, or the client not providing what was agreed. And a limit of one replacement search, within a defined period, so the obligation is bounded.
Day one, end of week one, then at roughly 30, 60 and 90 days, contacting the candidate and the client separately each time. Separately matters: each side will say things to you that they will not say to the other, and the gap between the two accounts is the earliest warning you get. The purpose is not attentiveness — it is that a mild concern at day 30 is coachable and the same concern at day 70 has already become a decision.
Most often an expectation gap that nobody surfaced: the job is not quite what the candidate was told, or the person is not quite what the manager thought they were getting. After that come poor onboarding — no equipment, no access, no clear owner in week one — a manager who has not made time, and occasionally a counter-offer that arrives late. Almost all of these are visible early to somebody who asks both sides directly, which is exactly what the check-in schedule is for.
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