A placement in Crelate is used to indicate your 'win.' Its most frequent use case is after a candidate has accepted a role (perhaps with a signed agreement) to notate information such as the salary, pay rate, start date, fee percentage, etc. Whether or not you're placing contacts for Direct Hire, Contract or Hourly positions, your placement form can be customized to meet the needs of your firm. Placements are ultimately intended to help you capture and report on the value your firm will accrue by having a candidate start a role for a client.
A placement form should help answer questions such as:
What is my typical fee percentage or pay rate for this client?
Which clients have continually brought me the most business?
What is my time to fill?
Which colleagues are most successful at placing high value candidates? How much revenue are we winning each week/month/quarter?
All of these should have answer to allow you to steer your business towards those areas that help you reach the highest value.
Beyond its use in placing candidates, placement form can also be used to indicate a milestone reached such as receiving a retainer. In this instance, let's say you sign an agreement with a client and will have 2 milestone retainers prior to placing the candidate. This may read: Retainer #1 | Retainer #2 | Placed Candidate in your ideal scenario (More on following this Project pattern here: What is a Project in Crelate?). These Placement forms are much likely very simple. Here you may likely be indicating the value accrued from that particular retainer.
What's Next?
Now that you understand how placements are used, let's take a look at some best practices we've seen other customers adopt and how you can then go ahead to create your own forms!