What eleven years in travel taught me about onboarding the candidate after the placement.

The thing nobody told me when I started managing a retail travel branch was that the moment the customer paid the deposit was the most dangerous moment of the entire transaction.

We had a name for what happened in the forty-eight hours after a booking. Buyer's remorse. The customer who had been excited on Tuesday started, by Thursday, to second-guess the decision. They'd think about the cost. They'd think about the in-laws who'd told them they should have gone somewhere else. They'd open the cancellation page and read the policy three times. If we didn't reach out during that window — with confirmation, with reassurance, with a small piece of information they hadn't asked for — a meaningful percentage of those bookings would unwind.

The exact same dynamic exists in recruitment. The candidate who accepted the offer on Tuesday is, by Thursday of the same week, mentally listing the reasons they should have stayed. They're thinking about the commute. They're talking to a friend who's heard mixed things about the company. The counter-offer from the current employer arrives. The recruiter who placed them has stopped calling because the placement is done. The new employer hasn't started calling yet because the start date is three weeks away.

The window most agencies miss

The forty-eight hours after offer acceptance, and then the three weeks before start date, are where most of the placement losses happen.

Most recruitment agencies do not work this window well. They invoice for the placement and move on to the next brief. We don't, for two reasons. One is that our 3-month replacement guarantee means we have a real economic interest in the placement holding. The other is that the operational practice of staying in contact during the transition is the part of recruitment I know best, because it's the same practice that held bookings together in travel.

Here's what we do during that window

We call the candidate at 24 hours, 72 hours, and one week post-acceptance. Not to pitch anything. To check that the paperwork landed, that the start date is firm, and that nothing's wobbling. We've caught two counter-offers in those calls this year and worked through both with the candidate to a place where the original placement still held. Without the call, both candidates would have just gone quiet on us and changed their minds.

We send the candidate one piece of information their new manager hasn't sent yet. Usually it's something practical — parking, dress code, what the first morning will actually look like. Small. But the candidate feels prepared instead of nervous, and the new employer hasn't had to do the work.

We tell the hiring manager, explicitly, what the candidate is worrying about. Not the dramatic version. Just the honest version. "She's nervous about the team meeting at 9am on the Monday. A short email from you confirming the agenda would help." Most managers respond well to this and the candidate arrives in better shape than they would have otherwise.

A small admission. None of this is dramatic. It's not the part of recruitment that wins awards. It's the boring operational work of stitching a transition together so the placement actually holds. But the agencies that don't do it lose four to six percent of placements between offer and start, and that number is the difference between a partnership model and a transactional one.

The placement isn't the end of the job. It's the moment the job has to be done well.

— Monique