A 12-month guarantee on every placement. That’s not something you hear often in recruitment.
It’s not a marketing line either. It’s a reflection of what the process actually delivers. More than 90% of their placements are still in the role after one year.
Most firms wouldn’t back that claim. Aliniti can because of the way they run their searches and what happens after the hire.
What started as an HR and organizational development consultancy gradually grew into a four-service business that now includes retained search and RPO. Recruiting actually came later. It grew out of deep, long-term advisory relationships with clients who needed to hire but weren’t being well served by other recruiters.
As Lewis explains:
“We became aware that recruitment by other people was not as involved, was not as deeply caring as we would like it to be. And so we thought, well, let’s have a go at it.”
In this episode, you’ll hear how that background shaped a completely different kind of recruiting firm. One that wins retained searches, delivers RPO projects, and builds client partnerships that keep work coming back year after year.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
Lewis and Jess have built a recruiting firm that works very differently from most agencies.
In this conversation, we talk about:
- Why are they confident enough to offer a 12-month guarantee on every placement
- How their consulting background changes the way they approach recruiting
- The role clarity process they run before every search
- Why do they stay involved with both the client and the new hire for the first 12 months
- How having multiple service lines makes the business far more stable
- How long-term advisory relationships turn into recruiting work year after year
Episode Outline and Highlights
- [3:09] How Aliniti started 25 years ago and why recruiting grew out of HR consulting
- [6:37] Lewis joins the firm as the founder’s son-in-law and why the partnership works
- [9:29] Jess goes from opera singer to director of talent solutions
- [13:30] The four-leg chair: why multiple revenue streams make a sturdier business
- [15:52] The retained HR model that solved the feast-and-famine problem from day one
- [19:31] The competitive advantage of knowing your client inside out before the search begins
- [28:24] Role clarity and the ideal state approach: why Aliniti won’t take a ChatGPT job description
- [33:49] How to have honest conversations about salary and the purple squirrel problem
- [38:56] The 12-month guarantee and the 90% retention rate behind it
- [45:37] Joint check-ins with candidate and manager and why they prevent early departures
- [57:57] Vision for the next three years, including a leadership transition plan
- [1:01:00] Why Aliniti uses profit sharing instead of individual commission
The Four-Leg Chair: Why Multiple Revenue Streams Change Everything
Direct hire. Or contract. Or executive search. Pick one and go deep.
That’s how a lot of recruiting firms are built.
Lewis and Jess built something different. And they didn’t plan it that way.
Aliniti was founded 25 years ago by Bill, Lewis’s father-in-law, who left the Marines, did a SWOT analysis of himself in his basement, and landed on HR consulting. The business grew from HR compliance to organisational development to training. Recruitment came about 15 years ago, when the team kept noticing that the firms they advised needed to hire and that other recruiters weren’t doing it well enough.
“We became aware that recruitment by other people was not as involved, was not as deeply caring as we would like it to be. And so we thought, well, let’s have a go at it.”
That fourth service rounded out what Lewis calls the four legs of the chair.
Why it matters
A one-legged business is vulnerable. When recruitment slows, everything slows. When things got tough during Covid, the retained HR and OD work on the other side of the business kept them going.
“All of the retained earnings on the other side of the business were keeping us strong.”
But the real advantage isn’t just stability. The four services feed each other.
- Retained HR clients bring recruitment work
- Recruitment clients become retained employer services clients
- The whole ecosystem serves itself
The original financial model
Bill solved the feast-and-famine problem before Aliniti even had a recruitment practice. His answer was retained revenue. An annual HR programme divided into 12 monthly payments. Clients get so much value from the partnership that they simply carry on past the 12 months.
“We’ve got relationships with clients that go on 15, 20 years now.”
The lesson here isn’t necessarily to add HR consulting to your business. It’s to think seriously about what recurring revenue could look like for you and what it would mean for your stability if you had it.
The Ideal State Approach: Why Aliniti Won’t Take an Order
There’s a difference between taking a brief and designing a role.
Aliniti does the second one. And it changes everything about the quality of the hire.
When Aliniti takes on a new search, they start with a 90-minute meeting focused entirely on role clarity. Not what the client thinks they need. Not who held the role before. What the role actually needs to look like in 18 months.
“We are asking them to tell us what you need in this role in the ideal state. Not today, not based on who was the incumbent. But what do you truly need in this role moving forward?”
From that conversation, Aliniti writes a tailored job description. Not a generic one. And definitely not a ChatGPT version with no bearing on what the client actually needs.
What the process produces
That job description becomes the foundation for everything that follows:
- An assessment benchmark built from the same document
- Candidate conversations grounded in specific expectations
- An onboarding plan tailored to the role from day one
The honest conversations most recruiters avoid
Role clarity also means challenging unrealistic expectations before the search even starts.
Jess is direct about this:
“Sometimes our clients don’t know what to expect. They might want all of these things and it may or may not be realistic.”
Aliniti provides validated salary data to show clients what the market looks like. They push back on the purple squirrel brief. They reframe what success in the role actually requires.
“If you don’t have these conversations and then you’re not able to find that person, they may just think you’re not very good.”
Setting expectations up front protects the client, the candidate, and Aliniti’s reputation. And it often opens the door to additional consulting work as well.
The 12-Month Guarantee: Why the Placement Is Just the Starting Line
The placement is not the finish line.
That’s the philosophy Lewis and Jess have built their entire model around.
Aliniti offers a 12-month guarantee on every placement. And more than 90% of their placements are still in the role after one year.
That number doesn’t come from finding better candidates. It comes from what happens after the hire.
“We have a lot of debates about our guarantee length. We do offer a 12-month guarantee and it’s really been great for us. We have such a thorough process that we do have a 90% success rate of our placements staying a year or longer.”
The structured onboarding process
The involvement doesn’t stop when the candidate signs. It runs for 12 months.
- 30, 60, and 90-day check-ins with both the new hire and their manager, in the same room
- Quarterly conversations through to the 12-month mark
- A readiness chart tracking role milestones and progress
- Assessment insights from the hiring process brought into onboarding discussions
The joint meetings are deliberate. Lewis explains the reasoning: if someone is going to leave, the six-month window is the danger zone.
“The big window is the six-month window. That’s the area where everyone’s figuring each other out.”
Why most placements fail (and it’s not who you think)
Jess makes a point that doesn’t get talked about enough.
Sometimes a placement struggles not because of the candidate, but because of the client. Poor onboarding. Lack of training. Unclear expectations. Aliniti’s process surfaces those issues before they become departures.
“Sometimes people just leave because that feels easier than having a tough conversation. And so we’re there to make sure that happens.”
The 12-month guarantee isn’t a marketing line. It’s simply the outcome of a process built around retention from the start.
Mark’s Key Takeaways
Two things stood out to me from this conversation.
First, think beyond the traditional recruiting revenue model. Lewis and Jess built their recruiting practice alongside HR consulting, organisational development, retained search, and RPO. Multiple revenue streams make the business far more stable and create deeper client relationships at the same time.
Second, the placement is not the finish line. Their onboarding process is one of the best I’ve seen. Regular check-ins with both the client and the new hire throughout the first year creates accountability on both sides and dramatically increases the chances that the hire succeeds long term.
If you want to build a recruitment firm where clients stay for decades and placements actually stick, this episode is well worth your time.
