Every healthcare search firm in Florida advertises a guarantee. It appears on the proposal, usually in bold, usually as a single line: 90-day replacement guarantee. It reassures everyone, it gets skimmed, and it goes unexamined until the day a placement does not work out and you find out what the sentence actually meant.

The guarantee is worth reading closely, and not only for the protection. How a firm structures it tells you what it is willing to be accountable for, which is more useful than anything in its pitch.

Replacement or refund, and why the difference is large

Guarantees come in two shapes. A replacement guarantee means that if the hire leaves inside the window, the firm reopens the search and fills the seat again at no new fee. A refund guarantee means you get some portion of your money back, often prorated by how long the person stayed.

Refund language sounds equivalent and is not. Getting back sixty percent of a fee does not staff your unit. You still have an open seat, you have lost the weeks the failed hire consumed, and you are restarting a search from zero, usually while paying overtime or agency rates to cover the gap. The real cost of a nursing vacancy is dominated by coverage and disruption, not by the recruiting fee, so a partial refund reimburses the smallest line in the ledger.

A replacement guarantee puts the firm back to work. That is the version worth having, and it is the version we offer on every permanent placement.

The terms that decide whether it is real

Four questions separate a guarantee that functions from one that merely appears in a proposal.

What voids it? Reasonable exclusions exist and you should expect them: position elimination, department restructuring, a material change to the role the candidate accepted, and non-payment of the original invoice. Watch for vaguer language, particularly anything that lets the firm decline when the departure is deemed facility-related, since that phrase can be stretched to cover most real separations.

How fast must you notify? Many agreements require written notice within a set window after the separation. Miss it and the protection lapses regardless of the merits. Put the date in your calendar the day the placement starts.

When does the clock start? Start date, not offer date, not invoice date. It sounds obvious and it is worth confirming in writing.

How quickly does the replacement search begin? This is the term almost nobody negotiates and the one that matters most operationally. A guarantee with no service commitment behind it can technically be honored while your seat stays open for four months. Ask for a start-by commitment on the replacement search, in writing.

Why the window is 90 days

Ninety days is not arbitrary. It is the period in which departures are attributable to the hiring decision itself rather than to everything that comes after it. A new Director of Nursing who leaves in week seven almost always left because the role was described differently than it turned out to be, because the reporting structure was not what they understood, or because the culture fit was wrong and both sides ignored the signals during interviews. Those are search failures.

A nurse who leaves in month nine is a different story, and usually a management story. We went through the pattern in detail in why new nurse hires leave in the first 90 days, and the practical takeaway is that a firm should stand behind the match it made, not underwrite decisions it does not control. A guarantee that promises more than that is either priced into the fee or hedged in the exclusions.

What the guarantee reveals about incentives

Here is the part worth sitting with. A firm that must replace a failed hire for free has a direct financial reason to screen properly the first time, and a firm paid on speed alone does not. That is the whole argument. A real replacement guarantee converts a promise about quality into an expense the firm has to avoid.

It also changes what happens in the awkward moment of a search, when a firm has a candidate who is close but not right. Without a guarantee, presenting that candidate is free money if you happen to hire them. With one, it is a liability. This is the same incentive question underneath the choice between retained and contingency search, and it is why we think the guarantee, not the billing model, is the more honest signal about how a firm will behave.

Questions to ask before you sign

  • Is it a replacement or a refund, and if a refund, is it prorated?
  • What specific circumstances void it, in writing?
  • How many days do we have to notify you of a separation?
  • How soon does the replacement search start, and is that commitment in the agreement?
  • How often have you had to honor it in the past year, and what did you learn?

That last question is the one that gets interesting answers. A firm claiming it never happens is either very small, very lucky, or not telling you the truth. A firm that describes a specific placement that failed, why, and what it changed afterward is a firm that pays attention.

How we handle it

Every permanent placement we make in Miami-Dade and Broward carries a 90-day replacement guarantee, and it applies the same way whether the seat is a staff RN in Miami or a confidential leadership search through our confidential search practice. We would rather spend the extra week screening for fit than spend a month replacing a hire for free, which is exactly the incentive the guarantee is meant to create.

Tell us about the seat you need filled and we will send you the terms in plain language before you commit to anything. We respond within one business day.

Frequently asked questions

What is a 90-day placement guarantee?

It is a commitment from a search firm that if the person it placed leaves or is terminated within the first 90 days, the firm makes it right at no additional fee. In a replacement guarantee, the standard structure in permanent placement, the firm reopens the search and delivers another hire. Some firms instead offer a partial or prorated refund. The two are not equivalent: a refund returns part of your money, while a replacement returns what you actually needed, which is a filled seat.

What usually voids a placement guarantee?

Read the terms before you sign, because the common carve-outs are reasonable but real: eliminating the position or restructuring the department, a material change to the role the candidate accepted, non-payment or late payment of the original fee, and departures caused by facility-side events rather than fit. Most firms also require prompt written notice, often within a set number of days of the separation. The carve-outs are not the problem; discovering them at week ten is.

Why 90 days rather than six months or a year?

Because 90 days is where hiring-decision risk lives. Departures in the first three months almost always trace back to the match itself: unclear expectations, misrepresented scope, or a culture mismatch that both sides talked themselves past. After that, retention is driven mostly by management, workload, and pay decisions the search firm does not control. A guarantee should cover the part the firm is actually responsible for.

Does a longer guarantee mean a better search firm?

Not by itself. A twelve-month guarantee attached to a firm that forwards résumés without screening is marketing, not protection, and it is often paired with carve-outs broad enough to make it hard to claim. What matters more is how the firm behaves when a placement does fail: how fast the replacement search starts, whether it is worked with the same seriousness, and whether anyone tells you honestly what went wrong.