Transitioning a business from a small start-up to a large, rapidly scaling business is a hard task. These are the key characteristics of a scalable, high-value business:
1. Build a strong team around you
When scaling a recruitment business, the first step is growing your team. A strong talent attraction strategy, including having a clear view on why consultants and managers should join your business, will strengthen your ability to attract quality, not quantity. Capital burn on unproductive headcount is the fastest way to prevent scaling. Early-stage scale plans should also include competitive commission structures and incentives to encourage long-term staff engagement and retention.
2. Manage your cash flow
One of the most important factors of scaling a business is ensuring you have the cash flow to support the growth. Overstretching your growth can lead to additional pressures and worst-case scenario you’ll have to downsize and start again.
As a recruitment director, strong cash collection should be a top priority to ensure you protect your cash reserves, which will enable you to fund the scale process.
This requires strong negotiating skills from consultants when winning business, and an efficient finance function that recognizes the importance of collecting receivables in a timely manner.
3. Set long-term, strategic goals for your business
Map out a clear business plan for growth through areas such as market strategy, customer penetration and international footprint. Having a clear business plan that can be communicated to your team leads to stronger staff engagement, along with underpinning the story of why future talent should join your growth journey.
4. Build a strong brand with clear visibility in the market
Small recruitment businesses often lack brand awareness and an effective marketing strategy. A strong brand is essential in order to scale. It enables your clients to quickly compare your business to its rivals. A brand must demonstrate experience, capability, and expertise and ultimately, instil trust in its clients. Visibility comes from utilising all the tools you have at your disposal - social media, your website, written content, and SEO, to name a few.
5. Invest in leadership development
Staff turnover is without question one of the largest obstacles to scaling a business. Employees must be invested in and encouraged to succeed. A strong leadership and development culture should be fostered via regular courses being made available to consultants, as well as written and digital material shared within the business, and external experts supporting the development and growth of all employees.
6. Operational efficiency
Often, boutique recruitment firms are sales-led and do not put enough focus around the good corporate governance, strong MI, and high-quality reporting which enable management to make informed decisions on the business. Always ensure your processes are robust, right down to ensuring terms of business are signed on all deals and compliance is tight. Use managers to help you control the growth and make it aligned with the way you want to be perceived as doing business in the market. Poor controls can lead to reputational damage when it goes wrong.
7. Diversify your offering
Diversifying into new markets means that if one part of your business suffers from market changes, you can rely on other income streams. This can equate to expanding internationally, scaling into related verticals, or launching a new perm or contract desk. This makes your business much more stable, and as the founder, it will give you security during the inevitable market challenges ahead.
8. Ensure fees are balanced across consultants and clients
Quite often, recruitment businesses find themselves in the 80/20 rule, where 80% of the revenue comes from 20% of the workforce or clientele. When scaling, you should that your monthly revenue is ideally equally spread among the consulting workforce without an over-reliance on any two or three consultants, or key clients.
