How to Start a Lifestyle Recruitment Business

Congratulations, you’ve taken the first step to become 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.

How to start a recruiting business from home and where to begin

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.

• You need a business plan. Even if it’s just you in the business and you’re not taking on a business partner, you still need to outline for your own benefit your target market, niche, costs, goals, and projections to make sure you stay on track and hold yourself accountable for business success markers. Your business plan is a roadmap to success, allowing you to establish the viability of the business, set intentions and use it as guide every step of the way. Without one, you might end up taking a few wrong turns. You may also need this for if you apply for recruitment business funding, so it’s good to have on hand. If you’re unsure on how to get started, follow our guide on how to write a recruitment business plan.
• You need to create a brand. Choose the tone of voice and character of your business’ persona in part through the niche you’ll be working in, how you want your brand to be recognised, and the kind of messaging you want to portray. When coming up with a business name, make sure you check Companies House to make certain it’s not already been claimed. Once the brand name is finalised you can then use it for business trading names, bank details, a website domain, logo creation, and social media profiles.
• You need to identify your niche. Choose which sectors you’ll focus on, a geographical area, and the sector you’ll be recruiting for – will you specialise in contract work, temporary roles, or permanent roles? Identify who you’ll be working with and stick with it; setting up a recruitment business in a niche you know means businesses are more likely to trust you as a specialist in their sector rather than someone who spreads themselves too thin.

Doing things by the book: Compliance for Recruitment Businesses

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:

Compliance

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.

• Register your business and yourself as the Director at Companies House
• You will need to complete national insurance registration so you can contribute towards your pension. What you pay is dependent on business profits, but just because you’re now your own boss doesn’t mean you have to leave behind all of the structured benefits of a workplace
• Ensure compliance with The Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003.
• You may also need to apply for a business license like the Notification to Process Personal Data
• Create a business bank account
• Ensure and put measures in place for GDPR compliance, as you need to understand your obligations and keep up with changes to legislation

Set up your recruitment business bank accounts

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.

Sourcing your clients and candidates as an independent recruiter

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?

Playing by the rules

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.

How to network and build relationships when setting up a recruitment business

• Recruitment is all about relationship building and maintenance, which we all know, however this is doubly important as a start-up recruitment agency
• Check in regularly and learn personal details without over-stepping boundaries.
• Remember, you represent your brand and your business, and at the beginning it might be just you. You have to make the effort, because who else will?
• Think about your business values and how you’ll communicate them, why they make you unique, how they set you apart from larger recruitment firms, etc.

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.

Sign up for a LinkedIn Recruiter License

• A LinkedIn Recruiter License is great for professional networking, job posting, reputation building
• They allow you to source candidates for your clients with advanced search tools, keep track of progress, view pipeline reports of candidate progress and your own workload
• As a member of REflex you will receive a LinkedIn Recruiter Licence, to help you find and engage candidates for your sourcing needs and a monthly Job Slot.

Create your brand materials

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.

Create a website

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.

Business cards

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. 

Data storage and client management systems

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.

• CRM systems offer holistic views of your recruitment process, from applicant tracking and progress through to overall company activity and performance stats.
• CRM systems and project management systems can be difficult to use and expensive, but luckily our REflex package can make things very easy for you. The job board on your website that we build you as part of our investment partnership integrates with your CRM system, so everything runs together seamlessly.
• Recruitment Entrepreneur use the JobAdder CRM system, which offers a holistic overview of the entire process, from applicant tracking and nurturing through to your overall company activity, so you can spend more time with people and not processes.

Recruitment business training and mentoring

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:

• Recruitment mentoring and coaching
• Client and candidate strategy
• Finance and accounting
• Marketing and social media
• Business development
• Talent Attraction

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.

Don’t go it alone, start your own recruitment business with us today

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.

The benefits of REflex with Recruitment Entrepreneur

REflex is completely flexible and tailored around you and your goals, the support we provide can include:

• Credit control support on all billings
• Management accounting
• Website, SEO and job boards integrated to our CRM system
• Branding and marketing guidance
• Monthly meetings with our expert team
• Find out more about our REflex lifestyle recruitment investment with us

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 Simon Cullum at sc@recruitmentvc.com or enquire online to start your journey today.