Client
The party paying for the seat when the company is not its own customer. Signs the contract the requisition depends on, and often holds a gate the candidate never sees named.
Decides
- Whether the contract that funds the seat is signed, extended or cancelled
- The rate the seat bills at, which the band is derived from
- Approval of the profiles submitted against the contract, where the contract gives them that right
- Their own interview round, after the employer's loop has already said yes
- How many seats the engagement needs, and by when
Cannot see
- What the employer's own funnel did to reach the profiles they are shown
- What the candidate was told about who is deciding, and when
- The margin between the rate they pay and the salary the candidate is offered
- What declining a profile without a reason costs the person behind it
Measured on
- Fill the seats the engagement needs without carrying employment obligations
- Keep the option to end the engagement without ending anyone's employment — that is what the vendor is for
- Pay for delivery, not for the search that produced it
What it looks like
Composite excerpts, written to be typical rather than copied. No particular message, company or person is quoted here.
The employer's loop finishes: screen, technical, panel, level. The candidate is told the process went well.
The profile then goes to the client for approval, and sometimes to a client interview the posting never mentioned.
A decline at this desk arrives to the candidate as a generic rejection from the employer, because the employer cannot state a reason it was never given.
What to notice: The candidate is waiting on a party that is not their prospective employer and that no message has named. Nothing in what they can see distinguishes this wait from an internal one.
What this position could do
Each of these is something this position actually controls, with the cost stated rather than implied.
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Let your round be named in the process the candidate is told Cost: low
Where the contract gives the client a profile approval or an interview, the candidate ends up waiting on a party no message has named. Allowing the vendor to state that stage — one client review, expected turnaround — costs no confidentiality and converts an unexplained silence into a stated step.
What it costs: A named stage invites questions when it overruns; an unnamed one never has to answer for itself.
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State in the brief whether the seat is funded or bid-conditional Cost: low
A search run against an unsigned bid is a real search for a conditional seat. The vendor's recruiters can only disclose what the brief states, so the one sentence that makes outreach honest — this role opens when the contract signs — has to originate here.
What it costs: A bid the market can see is a bid competitors can see; some clients treat the existence of the search as confidential.
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Return profile decisions on a stated clock, with a category Cost: low
The employer cannot tell the candidate what it was never told. A decline that arrives as one of three categories — profile, rate, timing — on a stated turnaround lets the vendor close records with a reason instead of a template, without exposing anything commercially sensitive.
What it costs: A category is a commitment; 'no' with no category can no longer be sent.