When you start a recruitment agency, the success of your endeavour depends on various aspects. From the niche it operates in, to the business model and company culture, there are several important factors that can make a huge difference when you decide to start a recruitment agency. Yet aside from bringing in new clients and delivering quality services, there are also some underrated elements that can make or break a recruitment start-up.
So, unless you manage your time, budget, challenges and day to day processes the smart way, these can translate into feeling overworked, a sense of confusion, stress and sleepless nights. In fact, according to an article published by Recruitment International, 8 out of 10 companies in the UK fail within their first year.
Their failure can be attributed to a wide range of reasons, from underestimating the competition, a lack of proper positioning, budget misuse to a lack of experience or just plain old fashioned running out of steam. That’s because starting a successful recruitment agency is not just about recruiting, it is often about the aspiring entrepreneur discovering their strengths, weaknesses and creating something unique that builds on their past experiences and reflects their vision while considering other aspects like budget and time management.
To make this journey as smooth as possible for future recruitment business owners, we’ve put together a few critical points to focus on when starting a recruitment agency.
Due to the entrepreneurial nature of start-ups in general and the recruitment industry more specifically, it’s easy to get carried away and bite off more than you can chew. So, if you want to avoid juggling more than you can handle while maximizing your productivity and earning potential it’s important to prioritize your tasks.
We all have 8 hours a day we dedicate to work. However, some people struggle to achieve the exact same productivity in the same number of hours.
So block out any distractions and channel your efforts in the task at hand.
At the end of the day, structure and discipline are your best friends and while you do set your own KPIs and manage your own time, prioritizing the most important tasks over the less important ones can take you a lot further than you can imagine.
Starting a recruitment agency is without a doubt challenging experience, an intense and emotional rollercoaster, that unless properly handled could take its toll not just on the entrepreneur’s professional life but also on his or her personal one.
Ideally, the business has all the partners and professional support it needs from the start, but that’s not always the case.
And aspiring entrepreneurs end up compromising on certain aspects of the business or pushing themselves too hard in order to make up for the missing pieces of the puzzle.
Therefore, in our opinion, it’s critical to develop a network that will complement your capabilities and experience and fill in for you when needed.
After all, you will be doing yourself a favour by outsourcing the things that aren’t your speciality and use that time to focus on what you do best and brings value to your business.
So, don’t be under the false impression that perhaps you are saving money by doing it all yourself. Because in fact you are wasting time, energy and letting the business run you, instead of the other way around.
Being a new business owner, with budget restraints, you are probably focused on doing everything perfectly from the beginning, but the truth is there’s no such thing.
In order to become great at something, you must first fail repeatedly and learn from your mistakes.
So, our recommendation is to focus on getting things done and learning from the experiences that arise instead of playing one situation in your head over and over again and trying to justify it as “preparing and acquiring more knowledge”.
A good exercise for this is to think in terms of “done is better than perfect” as well as “nothing is forever”. This way you get to finish the work and you get the chance to improve it later on too.
While reducing risks and improving performance is perhaps among the top priorities to consider when starting a recruitment agency, in order to not just survive but thrive in the current economic landscape, the truth is there’s no such thing as perfection.
And what’s worse is that when nothing is good enough, we tend to procrastinate. So, start tasks, even when you feel unsure, and trust your motivation to follow.
A good place to start is by studying the “eat the frog” concept, created by Mark Twain and popularised by self-development guru Brian Tracy.
The concept revolves around the idea that if the hardest task of the day would be to eat a live frog, then eating it early on and prioritizing it over other daily tasks would be the best approach in order to avoid procrastination and increase your productivity.
Bonus: Strategize your action plan for starting a recruitment agency
However, when it comes to starting a new business, nothing beats a proven-to-work process.
Starting a recruitment agency can be relatively scary if you don’t have an action plan to follow.
While there is no actual official requirement or qualifications to start a recruitment agency, it is highly recommended to at least attend some training courses that might help you build some confidence and ensure you have all the skills you need to provide your clients and candidates with high quality, valuable service.
And if you want to avoid the guesswork, you could consider becoming part of an established recruitment company and getting all the support and materials you need to successfully grow and develop your own recruitment agency.
Not only will it help you get your business off the ground, but it will also help you build a great reputation and a close network of partners, clients, and candidates.
If you want to make sure you’re set up well you can contact us to find out more about this opportunity and how the process works.