How should labour-market integration for immigrants be organised in order to make it successful? We compare what contract theory suggests with the empirical research on the topic. We compensate for the scarce empirical literature by looking at the larger group of hard-to-place unemployed persons, as well as at employment services more generally. We find that for-profit private service providers are not more effective than public ones when it comes to improving employment outcomes and they are often more costly to use. The policy brief is produced by Nordregio on behalf of the Nordic Welfare Centre and the project Nordic collaboration for integration. More information at www.integrationnorden.org