Handing off to fulfilment

Triage ends when a request is ready to staff. In smaller teams the same person triages and fulfils; in larger ones the request passes to a fulfilment coordinator or into the weekly resourcing meeting. Either way, the handoff standard is the same, and it is worth being explicit about even when you are handing off to yourself next Tuesday.

The readiness test

A request is fulfilment-ready when a colleague who has never seen it could produce a defensible shortlist without contacting you. Concretely, that means: skills confirmed with the requester, real start date and duration, commitment level, grade range, any hard constraints (location, client conflicts, language), and a priority set under the published rules. In ProFinda, moving the request to “ready to staff” status asserts all of this, so only move it when it is true.

The triage note is the handoff

Everything you learned during clarification that does not fit a structured field goes in the triage note: “Partner flexible on start by two weeks if the candidate is strong. Sarah Okafor was the reference profile. Client had a poor experience with contractors last year, prefer permanent staff.” Two or three sentences like these save the fulfiller a call and save the requester repeating themselves, which is what erodes their patience with the process.

When handoffs bounce

A bounced handoff, fulfilment sending the request back with questions, is data. One bounce is friction; a pattern is a process gap. The common causes are predictable: skills entered too broadly (“consulting”), constraints that lived in someone’s head, and priorities set optimistically to jump the queue. Track bounces for a month and the top cause will be obvious.

Closing the loop

When the role is filled, the request closes with the person recorded against it. This matters beyond tidiness: the staffing outcome feeds work history, which feeds inferred skills, which improves the next match. A request abandoned half-closed leaks that signal. Finishing the record is the last step of intake done properly, and it pays you back next quarter.