Permanent placements

If you are paid a one-off fee when somebody starts, rather than by the hour, that is a placement and it is not a booking. Switch Placements on in Settings → Modules.

Open it when the search starts

Not when it fills. Placements → New placement, with the client and the role, and leave the person empty while you are still looking.

This matters more than it sounds. The searches that went nowhere are what your real fee per hour is actually set by, and if you only record the ones that paid, your fees will drift below where they should be and you will not see it happen.

The fee

Three models, and most agencies use more than one:

• A percentage of the gross annual salary. The usual model for permanent roles.
• A flat fee. Easier to quote and easier to explain.
• A multiple of the weekly salary. Suits part-time and live-out work where an annual figure is hard to pin down.

The sum is shown back to you so you can check it rather than trust it.

The minimum is the important part

A search costs you roughly the same whether the role pays 28,000 or 80,000. Sourcing, screening, reference calls and getting both sides to a signature do not scale with salary.

So a bare percentage underprices exactly the placements that are hardest to fill. Set a minimum and it is applied for you, and you are told when it was the minimum that applied rather than your percentage. That is the number that decides whether you can afford to serve the bottom half of your market.

The guarantee

Set the length in days and it is counted from the first day worked, not from when you created the record. While a placement is live you can see how many days are left on it.

Ending one

You are asked why, every time. It is the one thing you cannot reconstruct later and the only input that lets you price a guarantee rather than guess at it.

A term finishing as agreed, or a client withdrawing the role, are not counted against your guarantee. Somebody resigning in week six is.

If it failed inside the window, Rostavo can open a linked replacement search carrying no fee. That is what the guarantee costs, and now it is a number.

What it tells you

The placements page reports your fill rate across every search that concluded, including the ones that did not fill, what proportion of guaranteed placements failed inside the window, what those re-searches cost at the fee you charged, and how long placements lasted in the bands a tiered fee is priced against.

Several agencies charge 15% for a 90 day guarantee and 20% for 180. That figure is what lets you do the same honestly.