What happens if the offshore placement does not work out is a contract question, and the published answers are narrower than they read. Every replacement guarantee in this market returns the placement fee. None of them returns the weeks between a resignation and a new person being useful, which is where the real cost sits.
Outstaffer sells recruitment and publishes its own guarantee periods, so read this as an interested party. The employer of record side of the business carries the same exposure.
Broking just told Treasury which risk it cannot carry
On 2 October the Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia lodged its response to Treasury's exposure draft banning unfair non-compete clauses. It supports the ban, and asks that targeted client non-solicitation clauses be carved out because they protect "client relationships developed through the business".
The supporting numbers explain the ask. Brokers now write 81.6 per cent of all new residential home loans and the industry supports more than 37,000 jobs, yet, in the MFAA's own words, "many brokerages are small businesses without dedicated legal or human resources teams".
A sector at record market share, run by businesses with no HR function, telling government that the thing holding its client book together is a clause now under review.
Whatever Treasury lands on, the planning assumption has moved. Capacity you can lose is capacity you have to be able to rebuild.
What happens if the offshore placement does not work out, in the terms people publish
A replacement guarantee is a promise to run the search again at no further placement fee if the person leaves inside a stated window. That is the entire product.
Which guarantees are published, and for how long?
Team Up Now publishes the longest: a lifetime replacement guarantee with no time limit, "whether it's 3 months in or 3 years in". Hunt St publishes six months on its placement product.
What does the longest guarantee actually do?
It runs the search again. Team Up Now says it will "source, screen and present a replacement candidate at no additional placement fee. You interview and choose." Honest wording, and also the admission. You interview again. You onboard again. You wait again.
The arithmetic of a placement that fails in month seven
Hunt St charges a $500 deposit and $4,500 on success, so $5,000 plus GST, with an optional employer of record service at AU$399 per employee per month. Team Up Now charges a flat A$300 per employee per month with an optional one-off A$2,000 recruitment fee.
Year one with nothing going wrong: Hunt St is $5,000 plus $4,788, so $9,788. Team Up Now is $2,000 plus $3,600, so $5,600.
Now the person resigns in month seven. Hunt St's six-month window has closed, so the $5,000 falls due again and year one becomes $14,788. Team Up Now's lifetime cover means the $2,000 does not repeat and the year stays at $5,600.
A $9,188 swing, decided by a date in a terms page. Both businesses still lost the same stretch of empty seat, and neither guarantee touches it.
The strongest argument against reading it this way
Guarantee length is a weak predictor of whether a placement holds. Team Up Now says as much on that page: its guarantee "rarely gets called" because retention runs higher when people are properly employed rather than engaged as freelancers. Six months from a provider that scopes the role seriously beats forever from one that does not.
So the guarantee is not the first question. The same logic undoes the ten hour audition.
Related reading
Where I would put the weight instead
Ask for the time, in writing. Days to a shortlist, days to a start date, who covers the seat while it is empty. Those commitments cost a provider something real, which is why fewer of them are published than guarantee periods. The market is loosening and the vacancy data no longer carries the scarcity argument, so ask for dates.
What happens if the offshore placement does not work out should be answerable in weeks, not refunds. To test that on a real role, put one through the platform and hold us to the dates.
So which would you rather have on the contract: forever, or fourteen days?
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