You’re taking the leap to start your own business, launching a recruitment agency, however, have you contemplated your costings yet? How much money do you need to start a recruitment agency in 2019?
Being prepared for the costs that you’ll incur is the only way to enter this venture, but what are those costs, where will your money need to go in the initial stages of your new startup journey?
It’s likely that you’ll be starting reasonably small; you may already have a strong personal network of clients which can join you when you start up. However you’ll still need to source new clients, and while the act of setting up a small business can be done on a relatively low budget, you do want to be able to quickly and securely scale up your business.
As for answering the question of how much money do you need to start a recruitment agency, short of giving you a figure, we can give you a great place to start building your costing plan.
Getting Started
You’ll have certain actual startup costs to account for, such as any overheads. Do you have an office for which you need to pay rent or a mortgage? It’s possibly too early to invest in this in your very early stages especially if there’s only one or two of you, which leads neatly on to the next consideration – how many staff do you need right away? Most entrepreneurs play all roles themselves until they have some cash to spend on extra staff, if you can do this to keep your staffing costs down, then great!
In 2019, it’s likely that you may only need your laptop and mobile to run your business, however, is there anything else, equipment wise, which you’ll need to invest in in the beginning, such as any software necessary to run your business, printers or internet dongles.
The creation of your brand may also incur a cost, depending upon your own skill set, you may need to get professionals to design a logo and perfect your branding or even build a website. While there are an abundance of platforms which allow you to do it yourself, such as WIX or SquareSpace, these have their own annual or monthly fees to run your site, or you might enlist the help of a professional to do this for you.
Marketing
Marketing is essential to a startup in any industry, you can’t begin trading unless you have customers, and customers need to know that you’re there and what services you offer.
We’ve mentioned the creation of your website, and the upkeep of this is one of your marketing costs, something that initially you may take on as your responsibility, but as you grow, will become part of the marketing team’s responsibility.
If you want to get your marketing right, you’ll hire a professional to help you. In the beginning, you may wish to hire a freelancer as there is less commitment involved and their time is usually more flexible, so, if you need a full-time marketer while you set up and then only 2 days per week to keep on top of things until you’ve developed, that’s going to be more comfortable with a freelancer than an employee.
Job Sites are frequently the go-to for job seekers, so we’re sure that you’ll want to get listed on job sites that will help you fill positions. You’ll need to set a budget for your spend on this and do some research into where and what is available.
One freebie in the marketing barrel is social media. This is every startup’s blessing as you don’t have to put any money into this, only time. It’s something you can do yourself (although allowing a marketer to take over eventually is a good idea).
Financing
The running of your back office, as a recruitment agency, is vital to a smooth running operation. If you don’t have this in place for your clients, you may run into financial difficulties very soon.
With money coming in and out as you place candidates and temps, you need to have a smooth and organised system in place to keep invoices sent and candidates paid on time, and a form of funding to work as a buffer can help with this. Enlisting the assistance of a back office solutions specialists, such as New Millennia could be your answer to both funding and a slick back office.
Beginning your venture with well thought out costings should ensure you don’t have too many surprises along the way and a finance and back office solutions specialist can help you get your cash flow in good working order as you grow.
