The Process to Go Through Before Starting a Recruiting Business
Do you think you’re ready to start your own recruiting business? Well, there are many different things you’ll need to consider. It’s not easy running a business, so you have to know if you’re ready to start. Here are some important questions to ask yourself:
Where to Start
Right now you’re probably thinking, “That’s a lot!” And yes, it is a lot! Building a business from the ground up is incredibly difficult. Even if you’ve been in the recruiting industry for a long time, it doesn’t mean you’ll be successful in running a recruiting business. Let’s cover the first two questions. Have you ever run a business before??
If your answer is no, then you’ve got some work to do, but we have to start somewhere, right? Even for someone like me who started one recruiting business and has now started another, I’d have to say the second one was harder!?
Second, are you a great recruiter? You would be surprised by how many people want to start a recruiting business and have never even touched recruiting before.?
If you’re answering no to both questions, let’s take a step back then because you need a badass business brain AND a badass recruiting brain to be successful. You are going to need training. Thriversity (https://rebrand.ly/TMR-Blog-Thriversity-homepage ) is perfect for giving you both, and I’d love to share more about that at the end. If you answered yes to one or both of the questions, then you’re already on the right track!
Your Experience
Let’s cover a couple of the next questions that go hand-in-hand with your recruitment experience.?
Have you managed people before? Managerial experience is especially important because as you’re growing your company, you’re going to be managing people and assigning roles and responsibilities.?
Have you hired people before? And I don’t mean it in the “hiring for others” sense. I mean, have you hired people that directly report to you? There’s a reason why recruiting companies hire recruiters to fill their internal roles. There’s a point where you need people taking over roles because there’s no reason for you to do it all! Taking this conversation further, have you run your own recruitment desk? This includes the responsibility of placing candidates AND the biz dev portion where you’re establishing clients. Maybe you’ve found clients, but were you involved in the fee agreements? Did you have conversations with upper-level executives? These often occur concurrently but are two separate beasts all on their own. See where this is leading? All of this pertains to your experience and what training you’ve had in the past. If you’ve never had this kind of experience, where do you go from here?
Learning from Others
So now you’re probably telling me, “Great, I can look up some YouTube videos, get a consultation with a lawyer, and go on LegalZoom to get this started.” Yeah, maybe you could do that, but it’s a lot. I think it will just bring up more questions than answers too. Don’t get me wrong. All of that is helpful. But how does it compare to real-world experience? If you answered no to most of the questions in the previous section, then I would suggest you go get that experience. You need to work at a recruiting agency. Yes, you should learn these skills from an agency, even with the intention of leaving one day. Let’s be honest. How else are you supposed to get experience? By working for others and gleaning knowledge from them. Speaking from personal experience, I’ve had recruiters work for me and then leave to start their own businesses. At the end of the day, people are going to do what’s best for them. It’s not selfish, is it? It’s just business. If I’ve convinced you, then just know that one day you’re going to start your own business, and someone is going to join and then leave you to do the same thing. Be respectful and remember where you started.
When Negative Emotions Get in the Way
I’m going to take this time to bring up something you might not have thought about. Imposter Syndrome. Wikipedia defines it as when “an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud.” Why am I bringing this up in the middle of discussing the experience needed to start a recruiting business? Because even if you never put a name to it, I imagine it’s something we’ve all felt at some point in our lives. I had a really hard time with people calling me “boss” and “CEO”. It made me feel small, which is crazy because it’s the complete opposite of what you would think. It should make you feel strong and tall. I went through it when I started my first business at 24 years old. And just because I started my business at that time didn’t mean it took off immediately. It’s an ongoing process, right? My suggestion is to get yourself an executive coach early on as well as emotional intelligence training. I didn’t have those until later in my career, and some things could have gone a lot more smoothly with those foundations.
The Cash Flow
Finally, to round all this out, do you have enough money to get you through your first year? That means budgets and financial planning. And you might be thinking, “Well I’m just going to have another job while I’m doing this.” Don’t do it. If you truly want to start a recruiting business, you need to let all of your other lifelines go. And yes, it’s scary. But if you’re really going to go all in and make this successful, then you actually have to go all in!
Summary:
Have you asked yourself all of the essential questions for starting a recruiting business? Everything from your business and recruiting experience to hiring and managing people to fee agreements and executive-level conversations. I think all of it combined will set you up for success. You’re going to have moments of uncertainty and doubt, but let’s not allow imposter syndrome to get in our way. This world is far too exciting and amazing to let too many things hold us back, but we have to set ourselves up for success.?
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