What it is
A notice period is the contractual or statutory obligation to keep working for a current employer for a set stretch after resigning, before starting anywhere else. Length depends heavily on seniority and contract. In the UK, the statutory minimum for an employee resigning is just one week once they have a month's service, but written contracts routinely set longer terms, often a month for standard professional roles and stretching to two or three months, sometimes more, for management and senior positions. A garden leave clause can extend the practical gap further, releasing someone from duties while the clock still runs and, often, while they are barred from starting a competitor role.
Jurisdiction changes the picture more than most recruiters expect. Germany is the clearest example: the statutory minimum for an employee resigning is four weeks, running to the 15th or the end of a calendar month under Section 622 BGB, and it is common practice, not an edge case, for contracts covering skilled and leadership roles to extend that to three months to the end of a quarter. A consultant used to UK or US timelines who assumes a German candidate can start inside a month is planning against the wrong number.
A signed offer is not a placement. A placement is whoever is still standing once the notice period runs out.
Why it matters
A signed offer is not a placement. The notice period is the exposure window between the two, and the longer it runs, the more time the current employer has to make a counter-offer, a competing process has to reach the candidate, or the candidate simply has to develop cold feet and go quiet. Time-to-fill measured from job order to offer accepted flatters the number and hides the part of the process a client actually feels: the gap before someone is at their desk.
It also shapes how a placement should be positioned commercially. A three-month German notice period is not a delay to apologise for, it is the market norm to set client expectations against from the first call. A candidate with a habit of short notice or repeated early buy-outs is worth a second look for the same reason a short-tenure pattern is: it says something about what happens after they start, not just before.
How boilr handles it
boilr logs each candidate's notice period against their profile in the Company Brain as soon as it is known, so start-date and time-to-fill forecasts run off the real date rather than the offer-accepted date the pipeline would otherwise default to. A long notice period is flagged as an extended risk window in the same tracking that follows counter-offer and flight-risk activity, so the account stays visibly open rather than getting marked done the moment terms are agreed.
Check-in tasks are scheduled across the notice period automatically, so a consultant is prompted to touch base rather than needing to remember to chase a candidate who is still weeks from starting. Because every notice period and its outcome is recorded in the Company Brain, patterns by sector, seniority and geography build up over time, sharpening the next forecast instead of starting from a guess each time.
