How to run a recruitment mandate end to end

Most guides on this blog take one part of the job and go deep. This one does the opposite. It walks the whole arc of a single mandate, from the first call with the client to the week after the candidate joins, so you can see how the pieces connect. Think of it as the map. Where a step deserves its own method, I will point you to the guide that covers it properly.

A mandate is not a job posting you react to. It is a piece of work you decide to take on, run, and close. The recruiters who do this well are not faster typists or better networkers. They are more deliberate about the front of the process, which is where most of the money is made or lost.

Take the brief before you take the mandate

The worst mandates are the ones you say yes to on reflex. A client sends a JD, you are keen for the work, and you start sourcing that afternoon. Two weeks later you find out the band is below market, the role has been open for five months with three other agencies on it, and the hiring manager rejects your first three profiles for reasons that were never in the brief.

Get on a call before any of that. You are trying to understand the role and read the client at the same time. What is the person actually going to do, who do they report to, and why is the seat open. A backfill for someone who resigned is a different search from a newly created seat, and a role that has been open a long time usually has a hidden reason it stays open.

Then qualify the mandate itself. Is this exclusive or are you one of several agencies. What is the real salary band, not the number on the JD. How fast can the client give feedback and run interviews. A brilliant brief attached to a client who takes two weeks to review a profile is a slow mandate, and slow mandates lose candidates. If the answers are weak, you do not have to walk away, but you should know you are working a harder search than the JD suggests, and price your time accordingly.

Turn the JD into a bar you can measure against

A JD is a wish list written by committee. Your job is to turn it into a short, honest bar that a candidate either clears or does not. Without this you are sourcing on instinct, and instinct is where late rejections come from.

Separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves, and be ruthless about it. A must-have is something the client will reject a candidate for lacking, every time. Everything else is a preference. Pull out the two or three things that will actually decide this hire and write them down in plain language. Add the practical filters that never make it into a JD: acceptable notice period, location or remote setup, and the salary the person needs to move, not the one they earn now.

This is the step that pays back the most across the whole process, and it has its own guide. If you only click one link here, make it the one on reading the JD and building a fitment checklist, because the quality of that checklist decides the quality of everything downstream. A shortlist can only be as good as the bar you built it against, so spend real time here before you touch a single search.

Source against the bar, not the job title

With a real bar in hand, sourcing gets narrower and faster. You are no longer looking for people who match a title. You are looking for people who clear the two or three things that matter, and you can ignore a lot of profiles that would have tempted you otherwise.

Work your own network and past candidates first. The person you placed eighteen months ago, or the strong candidate a client passed on for reasons that do not apply here, is worth more than a cold search. Those people already trust you, and trust is what shortens a search. After that, go where the specific skill lives. A niche role and a volume role need different channels, and spraying the same message everywhere is how you burn your name. When you do reach out cold, say something that proves you read their profile and understood the role, not a template that could have gone to a hundred people. The full playbook for finding people, including outreach that gets replies, lives in the guide on candidate sourcing.

Keep one habit as you source: log everyone against the mandate, with their status and their notice period, as you go. A mandate you can see on one screen is a mandate you can run. A mandate that lives in your head and your inbox is one you will lose track of the moment a second search gets busy. This is where a workspace like RecruiterDesk earns its place, keeping every candidate, stage, and note tied to the mandate instead of scattered across tabs.

Screen hard, then write the submission

Screening is where you protect the client’s time and your own reputation. Every candidate you submit is a statement that you checked them and believe they fit. Get on a call. Confirm the must-haves against the bar you wrote, then dig into the things a CV hides: why they are really looking, what would make them say no, their notice period, and whether the salary works. A candidate who says the right things about the role but goes vague about money is a candidate who will slip later.

When you submit, submit a shortlist you would defend, not a pile. Two or three profiles that clear the bar beat eight the client has to sort through. Each one should come with a short submission note in your own words: why this person fits the specific brief, where they are on notice, their salary expectation, and any gap you want to get ahead of rather than have the client discover. A good note reads like a recommendation from someone who did the work, because it is.

Late rejections almost always trace back to a weak screen or a submission that hid something. If your shortlists keep getting knocked back, the honest fix is usually earlier than you think, and the guide on why candidates get rejected late walks through where it goes wrong.

Run the client through interviews and the offer

Once profiles are with the client, the job shifts from finding to managing. Do not sit and wait for feedback. Agree the process up front: how many rounds, who is involved, and how fast each stage moves. Then keep it moving. When a client goes quiet for a week, your candidate does not sit patiently. They take other calls, and the best ones have other offers.

Prep both sides for every stage. Brief your candidate on who they are meeting, what that person cares about, and the format of the round. After each interview, get feedback from the candidate before the client gives you theirs, because the two versions rarely match and the gap tells you where the risk is. Chase client feedback within a day or two, in writing, and specific. “They were fine” is not feedback you can act on.

As you move toward an offer, get ahead of the number. You should already know what your candidate needs to move from the screen. Make sure the client knows it too, well before they draft an offer, so nobody is surprised. The relationship work that runs underneath all of this, setting expectations and staying credible with the client over many mandates, is its own discipline, covered in the guide on managing the client relationship.

Close it, and protect the join

An accepted offer is not a placement. The gap between offer and join is where the most painful losses happen, and they hurt more because you can taste the win.

Start with the counteroffer, because it is the most common killer. The moment your candidate resigns, their current employer may come back with more money, a new title, or a promise to fix whatever pushed them out. Talk about this before they accept, not after. Ask what they will do when the counter comes, and get them to say out loud why they are leaving in the first place. A candidate who is only moving for money is a candidate the counter will keep.

Then manage the notice period like part of the job, because it is. A long notice is dead time when a competing offer can land or cold feet can set in. Stay in regular contact through it. A short check-in message, a note when the client sends joining details, a nudge to book the start date. Keep them warm and keep them feeling chosen. Silence during notice is how you lose people you already placed.

What you do after the placement

The placement is a milestone, not the end of the relationship. What you do in the weeks after is what turns one mandate into a repeat client and a candidate who refers you.

Check in with your candidate after their first week and again after the first month. You will catch early wobbles before they become a resignation, and you will hear about their team’s other open seats before anyone posts them. Some of the best mandates you ever work come from a candidate you placed who now sits on the inside and tells you what is opening up. Do the same on the client side: a short call once the new hire has settled tells you how the process felt from their end and often surfaces the next mandate. It also gives you a natural moment to ask for a referral while the placement is fresh and the goodwill is real.

Then look back honestly. How long did the mandate take, where did it stall, how many profiles did it take to close. Tracking a few numbers across mandates is how you learn which clients and which roles are worth your time, and the guide on the metrics worth tracking covers the handful that actually change how you work. Run enough mandates this way and the pattern becomes clear: the work at the front, the brief and the bar, is what makes the close feel easy.