Some answers should end a conversation rather than prompt a follow-up question. These are the ones worth recognising early, when walking away costs nothing.
Agreement with everything
Every role you name is suitable, at the volume you suggest, on the timeline you want. Nobody's business is that easy to serve, and a provider who never says no has decided the sale matters more than the outcome.
The corollary: a provider who asks how you measured your volume, and pushes back when the answer is an estimate, is doing you a service that costs them the deal about a third of the time.
No attrition figure
Not a high figure: no figure. It is the number that most affects a client and a provider who is not tracking it is not managing it.
You cannot decline a candidate
Or you can decline one and not two. Or the shortlist arrives with a single name. Each is an allocation dressed as a hire, and the difference becomes apparent in month two.
Vagueness about who employs the staff
The answer is one sentence. Difficulty producing it usually means subcontracting that the provider would rather not discuss, and the problem is the reluctance rather than the subcontracting.
Pressure on the timeline
A discount expiring this week. A candidate who will be gone by Friday. A rate that rises next month. These are ordinary sales tactics and they are a poor fit for a decision with a multi-year horizon and a substantial setup cost.
A provider confident in the arrangement is comfortable with you taking a month, because the businesses that take a month are the ones that stay.
Reluctance to give a reference
Case studies instead of a conversation, or a reference who turns out to work for a related company. Both happen and both are answers.
Signals that are not red flags
Worth separating, because several ordinary things get treated as warnings.
A high attrition figure honestly given. Better than a low one nobody can evidence. This industry has real turnover and a provider engaging with it is more useful than one denying it.
Refusing to quote before understanding the role. Correct behaviour. A price quoted from a job title is a price for something nobody has defined.
Telling you the role is unsuitable. The single best signal available and the one most likely to be read as a lack of capability.
A waiting list. Annoying and frequently a sign that recruitment is being done properly rather than from a bench.
The bench question
A provider offering somebody who can start next week is offering an unplaced employee. Ask why they are unplaced. There are innocent answers and there is one that is not, which is that they were removed from another client's team.
What to do with a red flag
Ask about it plainly and listen to the shape of the answer rather than its content. A provider who explains a genuine constraint is different from one who becomes vague, and the difference is audible in a single call.
The one that is hardest to see
A provider who is competent, honest, well run, and wrong for you. Nothing about the conversation goes badly and the arrangement still fails, because the roles you have do not suit the model they operate or the scale they work at.
The only defence is having decided in advance what you need, which is what the previous part of this journal is for.
The pattern rather than the item
One of the signals above, in isolation, is a question. Three of them together is a description of how the provider operates, and the second reading is the one to act on.
The one about your own conduct
A prospective client who will not share the role in writing, will not say what they measured, and wants a price by Friday is a red flag from the other side. Good providers decline that business and the ones that accept it are the ones you did not want.
Which is worth knowing because it means the quality of the conversation is partly yours to determine.
Walking away well
Say why. A provider told plainly that the attrition answer ended the conversation learns something, and the industry is small enough that the courtesy is remembered.
It also occasionally produces a better answer, because the first one came from a salesperson and the second comes from somebody who runs the operation.