Starting a business is a big step. It’s a big decision to go solo or set up on your own, and it’s certainly costly – or is it?
Actually setting up your recruitment agency isn’t that costly at all, setting up most businesses isn’t. The initial steps, getting agency registered and starting out are all cost light.
You’ll likely be starting out small, even if you’ve brought clients with you or have a strong network of contacts to get started with straight away.
It’s also a fairly unanswerable question, we can’t give you a figure for how much money you will need to start your own recruitment agency, but we can give you an idea of what you’ll need and so you can forecast more accurately.
IN THE BEGINNING
In the beginning there’s only, realistically for most, going to be one or two bodies, you or you and a partner until, at least, you are further along the line, so that’s staffing costs kept to a minimum.
Will you need premises yet? Probably not, there’s no need to invest in this yet or welcome any unnecessary overheads any earlier than you have to.
Then we can ask, what equipment will you need to get started? Nothing that you likely don’t already possess; your mobile phone will enable you to make and take the calls you need to, your laptop or PC will enable you to do pretty much everything else, including building your website, which, in 2018, is essential.
You might also need to purchase a few items like a printer or Microsoft software packages if you don’t already have them, but again, you may already have these things and they’re not too expensive if you don’t.
THE EXTRAS
You’ll want to allocate part of your budget for the extras like getting business cards and logo designed. These might be something you feel you don’t need quite yet or perhaps you or a contact can easily whip up a logo, but for many, it’s going to be necessary (and much easier) to pay a small amount to get these done professionally.
ONLINE PRESENCE
Website
Creating your website need neither be complicated or costly, there is an abundance of options to consider for a website you can, without too much effort, build yourself. A build your own website on a site like WordPress or Squarespace, will cost you for a domain name, but it won’t break the bank. For example, Squarespace charge from around £10 per month, but, and here’s the important part – make it count! Your web presence matters and it’s an opportunity to brand and market yourself for a very low fee indeed. You’re paying to host your site, so make it easy on the eye, informative, user-friendly and easy to navigate. It should be smooth, not clunky to move around and information easy to find and click through.
Job Sites
Aside from your website, you’ll need to get your job vacancies listed on job sites, which will incur a cost. These listings are usually charged as Google Ads would be, on how highly you want your advert to rank in the search results. Do a little research on where you’d like to advertise or the best places to be and put a budget aside solely for this.
Social Media
As an extension of your website and as a significant part of your online presence you’ll need to build your social media presence or at least have one! That said, there’s not much use having it if you’re not going to put the effort in – this is free promotion and the more effort you put in the more you get out of it; so, connect, engage, interact and post.
BACK-OFFICE & FINANCING
Your back-office is an essential component in running your recruitment agency. Embracing a digitally run and centralised operation for your back-office is going to make your life easier and your business operations smoother.
Payroll and invoicing services can mean organising invoices for clients and paying your temps and workers can be incredibly simple, help with P45’s and processing timesheets, leaving you free to concentrate on growing your business, not chasing invoices.
Working with back-office specialists like New Millennia can also give you assistance with funding for your startup recruitment agency too. What does this mean? Well in the early stages, your cash flow is more than likely going to be a little tight, with the assistance of payroll and invoice financing, you can pay your temps before your clients have paid their invoices, keeping everyone happy. Plus with us, there’s no proof of credit eligibility necessary either.
We’ve given you the basis for a solid costing plan, you know what you need and what you don’t from all of the above and depending upon your starting budget, you may want to put more into your ads or your web design, it’s really up to you, so get planning and get budgeting!
