Playbook, recruitment agency
Cancelling a search is not cancelling a subscription
The word cancel arrives from three directions here and none of them is a customer ending a service. A hiring manager withdraws a role after CVs have gone over, a client ends a temporary booking mid assignment, or a candidate cannot make their registration slot. The first two are governed by terms somebody signed, and the clause that surprises people is the one saying an introduction does not expire when the role does.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for cancellations holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Withdrawing a brief does not withdraw the introductions already made, and terms commonly keep a fee payable if the client hires that person later, sometimes long after everybody considered the matter closed.
- A temporary booking is ended by notice on an assignment rather than cancelled, and the notice sits next to what is payable for hours already worked and shifts already rostered.
- Retained work is staged, so a search abandoned partway has already generated something payable, which is the difference between retained and contingent that clients least expect to meet.
- On the candidate side the same word means missing a registration slot, which costs nobody anything, and answering that with a paragraph about notice periods is how a jobseeker decides the agency is not for them.
How it arrives
- we want to pull the role can we cancel
- do we still pay if we hire your candidate later on
- how much notice do we give to end a temp booking
- we filled the job ourselves do we owe you anything
- can i cancel my registration appointment
- what happens to the shifts already booked this week
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The withdrawal position in your terms of business | What happens when a role is pulled, what has already become payable, and what is refundable on a retained assignment. Write it as plain sentences beside the clause, because the clause is what gets argued and the sentence is what gets read. |
|---|---|
| The introduction clause, stated in the open | How long an introduction stays live and what triggers a fee if the client hires later. Publishing it prevents the worst conversation in this trade, which is an invoice arriving months after everyone had moved on. |
| Notice on a temporary assignment | What each side gives, what is payable across the notice period, and what happens to shifts already rostered. Both the client and the worker ask this, and the two answers are not mirror images of each other. |
| How a candidate moves or cancels a registration slot | The route, and whether the slot is held. Trivial to publish, and it stops somebody who cannot make Tuesday deciding it is easier to disappear than to explain. |
The reply
If you mean withdrawing a role you have briefed, that runs off our terms rather than anything I can decide. They set out what is payable at the point of withdrawal and, importantly, that an introduction already made stays live if you hire that person later [1]. Ending a temporary booking works on notice instead, with the position on rostered shifts set out separately [2]. I cannot see your account or say what applies to a particular role. Leave your name, an email and the role and a consultant will confirm the position in writing.
It raises the introduction clause unprompted, because a client discovering it from an invoice is how the relationship ends. It splits permanent withdrawal from ending a temporary booking, since clients use one word for two mechanisms. And it declines to apply the terms to their case, which is a consultant's call and not a reading exercise.
Where it stops
The trigger. The client names a role, a candidate or an assignment they want to end, or asks whether a fee applies to a hire they have already made.
I can point you at the terms but not tell you what applies to your role, and anything involving a hire you have already made needs a person today. Leave your name, an email and the role and a consultant will confirm it in writing.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a role can be withdrawn at no cost, because an introduction already made or a retained stage already reached may have created a liability.
- Never say whether a fee is payable on a particular hire, since that turns on facts the assistant cannot see and a clause somebody has to apply.
- Never confirm the notice position on a live assignment for a named worker or a named client.
- Never tell a temporary worker their assignment has ended, because that is the client's decision and the agency's message to deliver.
Questions
- Is publishing the introduction clause not inviting an argument?
- The argument happens either way, and it goes far worse when the client learns the clause from an invoice. Stating it while they are still choosing an agency is the version where nobody feels they were caught out.
- Can it cancel an appointment or a booking?
- No. It cannot write into anything, so a cancellation always ends with a person. It can give the route and take the details, which is the difference between a message and somebody simply not turning up.
- Clients ask whether they owe anything after hiring elsewhere. Should it answer?
- It should say the terms decide it and hand over the same day. That question usually means a hire has already happened, and a wrong answer in a widget makes the commercial conversation that follows considerably harder.
Keep reading
- Everything for a recruitment agencyTwo audiences on one website. Process, payroll and compliance questions are answerable, application outcomes never are.
- Handling cancellations in generalCancellation content is hard to find on purpose. What it costs to answer plainly, how notice periods work, and what happens to data on the way out.
- Three clocks running on a recruitment websiteA shift starts before the office opens and the cut off falls at the weekend. Which times a recruitment site actually needs to publish.
- Three addresses, and the one that must not be publishedRegistration is at the branch, the interview is at the client and the work is elsewhere again. Which address may be given out, and when.
- The questions candidates will not ring a branch to askWhat to wear, how long it takes, whether there is a test. The registration nerves nobody will phone a branch to ask a consultant about.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.