Congratulations, you’ve taken the first step to becoming your own boss, working on your own terms, and you’re going to become a freelance recruiter. No more 9-5 if you don’t want to, no more working Fridays if you don’t want to, and being accountable for your own workload. But there’s a deceptive amount of set-up when looking at how to start a recruiting business from home, not just in terms of client sourcing and building a brand but in terms of compliance and licensing. Going from a successful consultant to starting a recruitment business can seem overwhelming and complicated.
Recruitment Entrepreneur are here to provide the support you need in personalised recruitment business training and investment, so you can focus on what you’re good at – sourcing clients and candidates. Follow our guide on how to start a recruiting business from home to make sure your new independent endeavour gets off to the best start.
You know you’ve got the potential, motivation, and talent it takes to succeed, and you’ve probably been thinking of setting up your own recruitment business for a while. Whether you want a lifestyle, boutique recruitment business or dream of one day building a world-class team, every business needs a market, a business plan and an identity to get started.
Setting up a recruitment business is more than choosing a colour scheme, logo, and calling up potential clients. Starting your own recruitment business means taking on the responsibility complying with government bodies, setting up bank accounts, and staying on top of strict data regulations. As the originator of your new recruitment business, you need to make sure you’re fully equipped for the following:
Setting up a recruitment business means you’re not just a successful recruiter; you’re now a business owner. You’ll now be wearing many hats. These are just a few steps on how to ensure compliance during your recruitment business set-up.
Separating your personal assets from your business assets is always a good idea for personal protection, but it also removes potential bumps in the road should you take on a business partner. Having a business bank account will aid scalability and consolidate your funds. It will also make tax filing easier, because every incoming and outgoing will definitely be associated with the business, making figures far easier to track.
Make sure you keep detailed accounts of your expenses and sources of income, your outgoings and incomings, because they’re crucial to understanding the performance of your business. Keep accurate and detailed accounts for annual tax filings. If this proves difficult, you may want to take on an accountant or some form of filing support. This is why many small recruitment start-ups opt for accounting support, because as a new business owner you will already be responsible for the successful start-up and monitoring of your business.
When thinking about how to start up a recruitment business from home, your mind probably flew straight to how you’ll source your own clients. You’re all set up, you’re compliant, you’ve got all of your paperwork in place. Now, how do we source clients and candidates?
The chances are you’re already a seasoned recruiter leaving a company to start your own, so it’s very tempting to take clients and candidates with you upon your departure or reach out to them after you’ve left. It’s understandable you’d want to do this, as you’ve naturally fostered and nurtured close working relationships with these people. However, you do need to make sure that your efforts aren’t going to sour relationships with your previous employers, as you don’t want to start a recruitment agency with a black mark already on your reputation, especially within the industry.
Make sure you check your contract from your previous employer for non-compete and non-solicitation clauses. If there aren’t any, then legally you can approach previous clients and candidates that were affiliated with your previous employer. However, this is still completely done at your discretion. If there are these clauses, we’d recommend at least waiting for the minimum term on them to expire before you try to approach anyone still on the books of your previous agency.
No matter how tempting it is and seemingly easy pickings, it’s best not to ruffle feathers and set yourself up as a renegade in the industry. Start your own recruitment business on good terms. Follow your gut, and if you think you shouldn’t approach a client regardless of a non-compete clause, you should err on the side of caution.
If you’re worried about lead generation, you’ll find our guide from our recruitment mentors on how to get new business in recruitment very useful.
Now it’s time for the fun part – creating your brand materials. This is where you need to think about how you want your brand to be visually displayed via your logo, web design, and colour scheme, and how it’s portrayed linguistically through tone of voice, slogan, and written content.
As an independent recruitment business, you don’t need a website with all of the bells and whistles, but you do need a website that is sleek, functions well, and communicates your services
There are platforms out there that will facilitate this, but if you’re looking for more support and don’t want to design your own website then our lifestyle recruitment investment partnership REflex can support you with your own website build. We provide beautifully designed, fluid websites, with built in SEO and Google Analytics and a Job board that integrates with your CRM so you can connect with potential hires directly.
Remember how we said to use networking to your advantage? Well, you need business cards for this too. Give these out at events, conferences, and if you chat to someone in passing, just to leave calling cards for your brand and business. Printed business cards can be known as collateral marketing, meaning leads might not be directly traceable back from them, but they’re still a really useful tool to getting your brand and business details in someone’s eyeline.
When setting up a recruitment business, go paperless. You’re an independent endeavour, but that doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice professional organisation. For this, you’ll need an integrated CRM system.
Not only are we experts in launching and growing recruitment businesses, but we are also entrepreneurs. We’ve been there and done it and now we support ambitious and talented people like you.
As a member of REflex you can request management support each month covering relevant topics appropriate to what’s happening in your business right now and can include:
Take a look at our portfolio of over 30 successful entrepreneurs whose independent recruitment businesses our recruitment mentors have helped launch and grow,
We have fostered a community of businesses that benefit from the expertise of our management team who provide funding, financial expertise, operational strategy, back-office support, legal advice, marketing, and talent attraction solutions, all of which enables you to solely focus on recruitment.
By joining REflex our business and recruitment advisors will help you launch your business, providing all the support, infrastructure and resources that new or young companies find difficult to access along with expert knowledge of the Recruitment industry.
Recruitment Entrepreneur are one of the most successful private equity investors in start-up and early-stage recruitment businesses. We invest time, money, and experience in people like you, who we know have the potential to become a great leader.
REflex is completely flexible and tailored around you and your goals, the support we provide can include:
We will immediately elevate your brand and give you access to our network, boosted by that of Chairman James Caan CBE and our existing portfolio of over 200 talented recruiters, ensuring that your business will stand out in the market from day one.
A common misconception of working with an investment company is that you’ll have to give up equity in your business. With REflex, you own 100% of your business and you decide the path of success you want to take.
When you want to start your own recruitment business, our team will be there to support you every step of the way to find out more contact Alex Niarchos at an@recruitmentvc.com or enquire online to start your journey today.
