Every recruitment partner will tell you they stand behind their work and their recruitment guarantee.
Ask them for how long, and the conversation tends to get shorter.
The guarantee is the only part of a recruitment process that carries a genuine cost to the supplier. Everything else is a promise about effort, candidate selection techniques or access to a network, and none of it is enforceable.
This lack of accountability for whether a hire stays and delivers or exits the business within a short time, is exactly why our founder Walter started the company back in the 90s.
Walter wanted his company to be different and set a higher standard than what was currently on offer. Over 2 decades later, our recruitment guarantees are the main differentiators from our competitors.
This blog will explain why the industry standard expires long before anyone can judge a hire, what our 12 and 18 month guarantees cover, and the five questions that will tell you whether a partner’s guarantee means anything.
In this article
What is a recruitment guarantee?
A recruitment guarantee is a supplier’s commitment that if the person they placed leaves, or the appointment does not work out, they will put it right within an agreed period at no further fee. It is the mechanism that converts a recruiter’s confidence into something you can hold them to.
Across most of the industry that period runs eight to 12 weeks. Some firms stretch to three or six months for senior appointments. In the majority of cases the remedy is a rebate against the original invoice on a sliding scale, so the longer the person stayed, the less you get back.
We don’t think that is a positive outcome for a client who has already paid thousands in fees, only to run the whole process again and pay a second time to do so.
Why do most recruitment guarantees expire too early?
Because the standard window closes before there is any real evidence about whether the hire was right.
Leadership IQ tracked more than 20,000 new hires across 312 organisations, assessing each of them at six, 12, 18 and 24 months. The failures were overwhelmingly attitudinal rather than technical, which matters, because attitude and motivation are precisely the things a CV screen and two interviews are worst at testing.
Note the timeframe the researchers chose. They measured over 18 months, not 12 weeks, because that is how long the answer takes to arrive.
Put those numbers next to a 12-week rebate window and there is an obvious mismatch.
What does a 12 to 18 month guarantee actually cover?
If the person we place leaves, or the appointment does not work out, we run the search again and find a replacement at no further fee. That runs for 12 months on every SD Search placement and 18 months on every SD Exec placement.
It is not a rebate against your invoice, and it is not a credit note against some future role. It is the same search, run again to the same standard, until the right person is in the seat.
- Eight to 12 weeks
- A rebate on a sliding scale
- You still have the vacancy
- You pay again to fill it
- 12 months on every SD Search placement
- 18 months on every SD Exec placement
- The same search, run again
- No further fee
Why senior appointments need 18 months
Senior appointments, the Chief Executives, Directors and VPs require longer guarantees as these roles have such a significant impact on companies. This is why we offer 18 months for the most senior positions as we want our clients to know we understand the weight of the decision, and the time it takes before anyone can fairly judge it.
A leadership hire either shifts something, or it doesn’t, and that verdict rarely lands inside the first year. These roles are judged on a first full planning cycle, a first budget they own and a first set of results that are unambiguously theirs, and none of that exists at three months or even at nine.
So we build the window around the evidence: six months for someone to settle into the role, then a full twelve months of results you can actually judge them on.
What should you ask a recruitment partner about their guarantee?
Five questions to ask:
- How many months, and from which date? Start date or offer acceptance changes the answer by weeks.
- Is the remedy a replacement search or a rebate? A rebate leaves you with the vacancy. Only one of the two options actually solves your problem.
- What voids it? You want this written down rather than discovered later.
- What happens between the start date and the end of the window? A partner with no structured contact after week one is not managing that risk, they are waiting to see.
- When did you last honour it, and what did that look like in practice? Anyone who has genuinely stood behind a placement will have a straight answer to this.
If your current partner’s answer to the first question is 12 weeks, it is worth asking what precisely they are standing behind.
If this appointment unravels at month 14, who carries it?
Before your next critical hire, ask that one question. On a 12-week guarantee, the answer is you. Solutions Driven built our guarantees so that risk sits with us rather than with you, and the results back the decision.