Eager to know what you need to set up your own recruitment agency startup? We’ve worked with recruitment agency startups for nearly 20 years now, and in 2019, we still love helping you get it right.
It’s a tough life for startups, did you know that only 25% of venture-backed startups succeed? However, that’s not to say you won’t be part of that 25%!
You’ll have plenty to get your teeth stuck into, and too many opportunities for something to slip your mind, or fall of the todo list, so we’ve drawn up a checklist of things you’ll want to organise and tick off before you’re up and running.
Business Plan
Your first step will be to create a business plan. You could enlist the help of a professional business consultant for this, or you can easily pull a basic one together yourself. There’re plenty of resources online to help you know what to include, like future forecasting, aims and goals for your business year by year, a marketing breakdown and financials.
Registering Your Business
You’ll then need to register your business. You can do this online on the Government website, but before you do, you’ll need to decide how you will register. Will you trade as a sole trader, (this is how freelancers trade, and if you’re starting a small recruitment agency startup by yourself then this will be fine), or if you’re setting up with the intention to grow and hire then you’ll want to consider registering as a Limited Company. Either way, having your trading name ready to go is a good idea for this step! There are a few rules and conditions as to which option you can class yourself as, so make sure you read up on the Government site before you commit.
Costings and Finance
How are you managing the financial demand of your recruitment agency startup? If you have the funds to both set up your business and to work as a buffer throughout the first year or two, then that’s great, but realistically most startups and entrepreneurs either don’t have that luxury or the desire to offer up all of their own funds to the business. By the nature of a recruitment agency, the invoices you charge are unlikely to be paid before you are required to pay your workers. This means that you could end up being frequently out of pocket and a startup business of any kind doesn’t have money to burn like this. There are financing options available to you, however as a startup your options for a bank loan will be limited if at all successful, due to your lack of good credit as a new business, and invoice factoring, which you may have heard of, both costs and allows you access to only a fraction of the invoice amount right away. Alternatively, you could consider the New Millennia’s financing option, offering 100% invoice financing and requiring no credit eligibility check!
Back Office
Automating your back office is the best way to stay on top of the invoicing, payroll, communications and everything else that you need to run a recruitment agency smoothly. Our back office management here at New Millennia covers your payroll management and processing, invoicing software and workforce management so that you can really concentrate on satisfying your clients and growing your business. Be safe in the knowledge that your invoices are securely sent and collected for you, in addition to your payroll and your timesheets being processed, and P45’s issued, plus and check in whenever you like on your online portal.
Insurance
Your business, as does any, needs insurance. This is particularly important as you are dealing with potentially vast numbers of candidates and placing them into employment with other companies, you are vulnerable to unique situations compared to other businesses, and you need to know what you could be liable for and be prepared should the worst happen. Do your research here and consider options such as employers liability insurance and employment disputes insurance, there are specialist recruitment agency insurance firms out there, so shop around.
Marketing
Your marketing will be covered in your business plan, so in theory, you know what you’re doing. However, getting your marketing materials in order really does deserve its own place on this checklist. You’ll need to, as a minimum in 2019, build a website, taking into consideration SEO, set up and connect all of your social media platforms and plan regular and consistent engaging content for these, complete your branding and organise materials with this branding such as business cards for networking.
Also detailed in your business plan and necessary for marketing purposes are your fees, what will your rates, conditions and special offers be?
Finding Your Client Base
Your client base will likely follow once you’re all set up unless you have any eager leads before you’re entirely up and running. However, the question for most recruitment agency startups is where to find your business, your clients and your pool of candidates. Networking both on and offline is essential and is generally free, so take the time and work those circles. LinkedIn and Twitter will likely be where you want to focus most of your attention on social media; however, don’t rule out Instagram and Facebook especially depending upon the industry you’re targeting.
