Permanent, where the work is done and the deal can still go.
Built for the desk where placements fall over at offer and resignation, after the hard work is already done.
Quick answer
Signals supports permanent recruitment as an applicant tracking system and CRM in one, covering the full cycle from brief to start date. It tracks offer and counter-offer risk, guarantee and rebate periods, and start dates after acceptance, and it records the fee basis agreed with each client. It evidences what happened, and leaves invoicing and reconciliation to a finance system.
A perm desk in one paragraph
A perm desk is eight weeks of work compressed into a decision a candidate takes in one evening. You qualify the brief, you source, you sell the role, you manage a process you do not control, and then someone’s current employer makes a phone call and it is gone. Nothing about the earlier work was wrong. The search was right, the shortlist was right, the client was ready. The month still ends at zero, and the next one starts there too. Everything you did lives in one workspace, and none of it counts until someone starts.
What makes this desk hard
Counter-offers arrive too late to do anything about.
By the time a candidate mentions their employer wants to talk, the conversation that would have prevented it happened six weeks ago and did not happen.
The last two weeks decide the placement.
Offer, negotiation, resignation. The stage with the most at stake is the one with the least visible activity, and a candidate going quiet looks the same as a candidate thinking.
A placement is not finished when it starts.
Guarantee and rebate periods run for weeks or months afterwards. Most desks track them in someone’s calendar and find out the hard way.
Candidates accept and then do not start.
Something changes at home, or the counter-offer comes after resignation. No system prevents this, because it is not a system problem.
What Signals does about each
Counter-offer risk, surfaced early.
Comp expectations and current employer sentiment come out on calls, and both are on the record. Coaching shows which recruiters raise it at intake and which discover it at offer. Team call coaching.
The last two weeks, made visible.
Offer is its own stage with its own behaviour, and a candidate who has gone quiet surfaces rather than sitting still. What to do next.
Guarantee periods, tracked on the placement.
The rebate window is a date on the record, visible until it expires. Signals tracks the period, your finance system handles anything owed. Everything on a role.
Start dates, watched but not guaranteed.
Signals surfaces a candidate who has gone quiet between acceptance and start, which buys you a conversation. It will not stop someone changing their mind, and no software will.
The pipeline in Signals
One pipeline, with permanent, retained and contract roles side by side.
What is different for a perm desk
Offer as a real stage. Not a status on the way to placed. Offer, negotiation and resignation each behave differently, and a candidate can sit in any of them.
Counter-offer as something the system knows about. Flagged from what was said, not entered after the fact.
Guarantee and rebate periods. Set per client, tracked per placement, visible until they expire.
Start dates after acceptance. The gap between signing and starting is a live period on the record, not a closed file.
Fee basis per client. Base or total package, recorded on the account and applied to the placement.
All of it recorded as evidence. Signals holds what was agreed and what happened. Invoicing, credit notes and reconciliation belong to your finance system.
Common questions
Yes, as its own stage. Offer, negotiation and resignation each behave differently in Signals, and a candidate can sit in any of them. Counter-offer risk is flagged from what was said on calls, so comp expectations and current employer sentiment are on the record before offer, not after it.
Yes, per placement. The rebate window is a date on the record, set from the fee basis agreed with that client, and visible on the placement until it expires. Signals tracks the period and shows you it is still running. Anything owed when it is triggered is handled by your finance system.
No, deliberately. Signals records the fee basis agreed with each client and the value agreed on each placement, as evidence of what happened. It does not calculate, invoice, credit or reconcile. Those belong in a finance system that is built for them, and an ATS that claims otherwise usually does both jobs badly.
Signals surfaces it, it does not prevent it. A candidate who has gone quiet between acceptance and start comes up rather than sitting still, which buys you a conversation while there is still time to have one. If someone changes their mind, no software stops that, and we are not going to claim otherwise.
Yes, on the same records. Contract and executive search desks lose work at different points, so the stages, the risk signals and the periods tracked after placement differ by desk. The workspace, the people and the companies stay the same, so a mixed desk is one system rather than two.