Setup Considerations: opportunity types

What this achieves

The type you give an opportunity decides what happens to the person who gets it, not merely how the posting is labelled. Choosing it wrongly either moves somebody who expected temporary work, or leaves a permanent move untracked.

Decision 1: which type this piece of work is

All four types are posted the same way and matched the same way. They differ in how long the work lasts and whether the person leaves their current role to do it.

Option	Description
Full Role	A permanent move into a different role. The person leaves what they were doing.
Gig	A short piece of work carried out alongside the person’s existing role, usually measured in hours per week.
Project	Defined project work with a start, an end, and progress tracked against it.
Secondment	A temporary placement in another part of the company, with a planned return date.

The question that settles it is what the person’s job looks like the week after they accept. If it is unchanged except for some extra work, that is a gig. If they are somewhere else and coming back, that is a secondment. If they are somewhere else and not coming back, that is a full role.

Example: James Whitfield spends six hours a week helping Finance at HC Corp UK Ltd and stays a Senior Software Engineer throughout. That is a gig, not a secondment, because he never left Engineering.

Decision 2: what acceptance actually does

This is the decision that costs the most to get wrong, because the four types diverge sharply at the point somebody is accepted.

Option	Description
Gig	A gig assignment is created against the opportunity, with its own dates, hours per week, and progress. The employee’s position is unchanged.
Project	A project assignment is created, with its own dates and a progress figure. The employee’s position is unchanged.
Secondment	A secondment placement is created. The employee moves to the host department for the placement, and reverts to their original position when it ends.
Full Role	The application is marked accepted. No assignment or placement record is created, and the permanent move is not made by accepting.

That last row is the one to read twice. Accepting somebody for a full role records the hiring decision; it does not transfer them.

A permanent move is made through a mobility request, which carries its own approval chain and its own effective date. Post the opportunity, run the applicants through it, and then raise the request that actually moves the person.

Example: Olivia Bennett accepts an applicant for a permanent engineering role at HC Corp UK Ltd. Until a mobility request for that person is raised, approved, and completed, their record still shows their previous position and reporting line.

Decision 3: whether the current manager gets a say

The two routes differ here, and the difference is not obvious from the postings.

Option	Description
Applying to an opportunity	The application goes to the people reviewing that opportunity. No approval is asked of the applicant’s current manager.
A mobility request	Approval routes through the current manager, then the target manager, then HR. Each stage is visible on the request.

If releasing somebody must be a manager’s decision rather than a courtesy, the mobility request is where that is enforced. An application on its own does not ask anyone for permission.

Decision 4: dates, effort, and capacity per type

The scheduling fields are shared, but which of them matter depends on the type you chose.

Option	Description
Start date and end date	Meaningful for a gig, a project, and a secondment. A full role usually has a start date and no end.
Application deadline	Applies to all four. It closes applications, not the opportunity.
Hours / week	The defining figure for a gig, because it is what the person’s existing manager is really being asked for.
Max applicants	Caps how many applications are accepted. Useful where reviewing is the bottleneck.
Pay rate	Set as an amount, a currency, and a unit of hour, day, or fixed. Leave it blank where the work carries no separate rate.

Example: a gig at HC Corp UK Ltd set at six hours a week is a different proposition from one set at twenty, even with identical descriptions. The figure is what a current manager will weigh.

Decision 5: confidential or open

Marking an opportunity confidential hides it from the marketplace so that only invited reviewers see it. That is the right choice for a role that cannot be announced yet, and the wrong choice as a default.

A confidential posting cannot be found by the people best suited to it, which removes most of the reason for posting internally at all. Use it for the genuine exception.

What is expensive to change later

Decision	Cost of changing later
The type, after applications arrive	Highest. Applicants applied to a temporary piece of work or a permanent move, and the two are not interchangeable.
Treating an accepted full role as a completed move	Highest. The person is not moved until a mobility request completes, and nothing on the opportunity says otherwise.
Requirements, after matches are generated	High. Scores are computed against the requirements as they stood, so changing them means generating matches again.
Confidential, after publishing	Medium. People who already saw the posting cannot unsee it.
Application deadline	Low. It governs new applications only.
Pay rate, hours, description	Low before publishing, and worth telling applicants about after.

What happens next

Decide the type before you write the posting, because the type governs which of the scheduling fields matter and what the person is agreeing to. Once it is posted, requirements are what matching runs against, so set those before generating matches rather than after.