This week I finally had time to rescue "Leeory" Jenk.. I mean Kerman from orbit. Also Barhat, Bartbro, and Ferdo. Must have been rocket failure week on Kerbin. Unfortunately all rescuees were scientists and engineers when all I needed is another pilot. Oh well. Rescuing Kerbals avoids having to pay a sign-on bonus and at a current rate of 239k kerbal bucks per hire that's a savings of about $1M right there. I can probably find a use for them. I do have a contract for a science station around Minmus that requires a science module staffed by 2 scientists, and I always put an engineer aboard for the inevitable broken antennas or solar panels.
They had to wait a bit for their rescue however. I have a ship design that can rescue a single kerbal from anywhere in the kerbin/Mun/Minmus system but it costs about $50k per launch. Two rescue contracts came up at once and I grabbed them both so rather than fly two identical missions I bought some tech and designed a ship that can rescue up to 6 Kerbals at a time. Reentry is a little sketchy (it needs a good pilot) and it costs about double what the single-seat version costs so Leeory et. al. had to wait a couple weeks while I gathered funds to build and lunch it. Good thing because while I was doing that the other two rescue contracts came up. Grabbed them as well and sent up Stauki Kerman as pilot .. got 'em all in one go.