Redeployment

Why is redeployment cheaper than a new placement?

Because most of the expensive work has already been done. The person has been sourced, screened, referenced, and verified; their documents are on file; they have a track record the firm can speak to from direct experience rather than from a reference call. What remains is matching and submission. That is also why redeployment tends to place faster, which matters to clients who value a start date, and why a firm with strong redeployment can accept work that a firm starting from scratch would decline on timing.

When should a firm carry someone with no assignment?

Only deliberately, and only where the skill is scarce enough that the person would be hard to replace and demand is visible rather than hoped for. Carrying an unassigned worker means paying them out of the firm's own funds with no billing against it, so the decision is a financing decision rather than a recruiting one. The honest version of it names a date at which the position will be reviewed, so an intentional short-term investment does not become an unexamined ongoing cost.

What should be recorded when redeployment fails?

The reason, in a small closed set rather than free text: the worker took a role directly, the worker went to another firm, no suitable role was open, the rate expectation could not be met, the assignment ended sooner than the notice allowed, or the worker left the contract market. Aggregated over a quarter, those reasons tell a firm whether its problem is timing, pricing, coverage, or competitiveness. Recorded as prose, they tell it nothing.

When does redeployment have to start?

Far earlier than most desks run it. By the time an assignment has ended, the contractor has already begun looking elsewhere, other firms have approached them, and the window to place them without a gap has closed. The practical trigger is a fixed number of weeks before the scheduled end date, calculated backwards from how long a submission-to-start cycle actually takes on that desk.

That means the trigger has to be automatic. Relying on a recruiter to remember which of their contractors is finishing next month works until the desk gets busy, which is precisely when it matters. A report or alert driven from assignment end dates, reviewed on a fixed weekly rhythm, is the difference between redeployment as a process and redeployment as a coincidence.

What conversation actually needs to happen, and with whom?

Three, and they are usually run out of order. The first is with the client manager, to establish whether the assignment will extend, because everything else depends on that answer and managers frequently have not decided until asked. The second is with the contractor, to establish what they want next, what they will accept, when they can start, and whether anything about their situation has changed.

The third is internal: telling the rest of the desk that a known, vetted person is becoming available. Firms lose redeployments to their own structure when one recruiter's contractor is invisible to a colleague who has a matching role open that week. A shared, current view of who is finishing and when is worth more than any individual recruiter's diligence.

What has to be current in the record for a match to be findable?

Availability dates first. A contractor record that says available with no date is unsearchable in the way that matters, because the question is always whether someone is free on a specific start date. Then the skills and tools actually used on the assignment just finishing, which are often different from those on the profile that won it two years ago.

Beyond that, the constraints that decide whether a match is real: acceptable locations and travel, the rate they will now accept given what they have been earning, notice they owe, any sector they will not work in, and any client-specific restriction that applies to them. Updating these at assignment end, as a routine step rather than when a role appears, is what makes the search return people rather than noise.

Which contractual terms restrict where someone can go next?

Assignment paperwork frequently limits the next move. Non-solicitation clauses may prevent approaching the client's staff or may restrict placing the contractor with certain organisations for a period. Some client agreements restrict moving a worker directly to a competitor of that client. Others give the client a right to convert the person during or shortly after the assignment, which changes who is entitled to what if the contractor moves.

There is also the worker's own agreement, including notice and any restrictions they carry personally. What is enforceable, and how far a restriction can reach, depends on the jurisdiction and on the specific wording, and it varies between countries and often between states. Checking the actual documents before promising a contractor their next role, and taking legal advice where a restriction is broad, is cheaper than withdrawing an offer afterwards.

How should redeployment be measured without gaming it?

Define the measure before reporting it. A workable definition is the proportion of assignments ending in a period where the same worker started another assignment within a stated number of days. Every part of that needs pinning down: whether extensions with the same client count, how long the gap may be, and whether workers who chose to leave the market are excluded from the denominator.

Resist the urge to compare the resulting figure with any published number. Redeployment rates depend on the mix of skills a firm carries, the length of typical assignments, how concentrated its client base is, and how much of its work is specialist. A firm placing niche specialists on long assignments will look worse than one placing general operational staff on short ones, and the comparison says nothing useful. Track your own figure against your own history and against the reasons recorded when redeployment did not happen.