Stirling People Solutions - The First Year

It is almost impossible to believe it has now been over a year since I launched Stirling People Solutions.

I remember writing my first article around this time last year to document the early days, including the period before actually taking the leap. Time really does fly when you are having fun! (Or crying yourself to sleep haha).

I felt it was important to mark the occasion with a bit of a reflection session on how the last 12 months have been. The ups, the downs, the wins and the learning points.

So.... firstly, yes, it has been worth it! I love running my own business and being my own boss!

As much as I love it, it has also been incredibly hard with some almighty lows and challenging moments.

How was the first year?

This last year has been unpredictable for obvious reasons, but I can honestly say that I have never seen a market shift so quickly in the 11 years that I have worked in the recruitment industry.

When I first started out, I was most worried about there not being any jobs available because of the pandemic, but there would be an abundance of candidates, therefore lowering the need for my services.

I am very lucky that I have a great network who wanted to support me and create partnerships very early on, which gave me an incredible starting platform and enabled me to start working on live roles almost straight away.

People at that time were understandably very worried about the security of their jobs, and being placed on furlough was almost the same as being made redundant to them, as nobody knew how long it would be around for. Everyone wanted to have a conversation and secure something new before furlough become redundancy.

Pretty much everyone I reached out to was interested in having a conversation and I quite quickly grew a strong pipeline without even using main job boards.

(This part is not a brag session, just building the transparent picture. The other side of the story will come very soon)

I made a placement in my first month which was an immediate start, again in month 2, and then in month 3, I placed 5 mid to senior people and had my best month still to date!

This momentum continued for a good 6 months, client list was growing well, pipeline was steady, recommendations and testimonials were coming in. Life was good!

I must have cracked it, surely?

I know what you are thinking, sounds too easy right?

I remember going into November 2020 with several final stage interviews just about to take place for some good level positions, buzzing that it was going to be a big month!

Then, my mate Boris announces the lock down for the Christmas period! Pretty much overnight, every single option fell out. Either client put the role on hold until they knew how things were going to pan out. Or the candidates lost confidence in the market and decided to stay put.

Devastated would be an understatement! 😭

December was naturally quiet through a mixture of the lock down, uncertainty and a general need for people to forget about it and try and enjoy the Christmas period after the year everyone had just had.

I did manage to get a couple of offers in for Jan starters, one of which then emailed me over Christmas pulling out!

Where the hell has this u-turn come from?

I don't mind telling you, whether it be a kind of arrogance or maybe just early enthusiasm, I did not see it coming! I genuinely just thought "I'm out there now, it will just keep getting bigger if I keep doing what I am doing".

So what do you do? Naturally you plough in 14+ hour days, everyday, to try and get it back! I must work harder, I must work longer, evenings, weekends etc because all you really have at the moment is time to offer this thing.

I got to Christmas week, I remember half way through making Christmas dinner getting the laptop out and sending emails etc and just thought "what am I doing?". I shut the laptop, made a banging dinner, got the wine flowing, took some quality time off and hit the reset button ready for the new year.

New Year, fresh mindset, let's get it! 💪

Right then! Reset done, relaxed, eaten too much, drank too much, let myself actually forget about work for about a week. Time to go get this now! So I hit it hard, catch up, recap, what's still on, what's new, back to the searches and get myself back out there.

No exaggeration, work starts flying in! I am taking on new clients left, right and center and I am starting to rack up the new interviews and rebuild my pipeline. We're back!

Or are we?... Something was different. There didn't seem to be any commitment from candidates coming into 2021. People just not showing up, not answering video interviews and just pulling out at the final hurdle and then disappearing off the face of the earth!

This is going to make me sound like the biggest a***hole on the planet because so many people needed it, and without it a lot of people would have been in very difficult situations. But as soon as the furlough scheme was extended until October, the candidate market died!

From a humanity point of view, great that no one needed to worry about looking for employment 👍

From a recruitment point of view, this is terrible news!!!

That coupled with the restrictions on face to face interviews, over a year with no trainee's coming through the ranks and over 7500 new recruitment businesses being registered during the pandemic, I was starting to feel it.

Something I never thought I would have to do in my first year is turn away new clients! The first time I had to do this was heart breaking, but you have to be honest and transparent. There is no point in taking on new business if you know that the candidates are not out there. Especially if you have tonnes of jobs on already that aren't moving!

All you will do is ruin your reputation very fast.

The last 6 months (the 2nd half) have been almost a complete contrast to the first 6 months.

Why are you still doing it?

Before I get into the learning of the last year, even with all the challenges, I've made money.

Bills are paid, brand is built and evolving and the market will recover, it always does!

Another huge reason why I ploughed through all this it that as an individual if I commit to something, I will never fail or give in. The embarrassment of not doing what I said I was going to do would be too much for me.

For example, this is why in January I tell everyone that I am having a month off the booze, if I tell everyone then I make it real and it isn't just me that will know I failed.

Want to know something weird?

The weird thing is, I actually needed this last 6 months. I needed to struggle, worry, not be spoilt by it being too easy and everything going to plan.

It gave me the opportunity to evaluate what I am doing, the tools I have, my processes, what I can add, take away or improve on.

It also allowed me to really hone in on what I want to do and realise that I had been sucked down a direction that I didn't really want to go in. This was because I needed to make money fast due to starting on a small budget.

At that point I could start to strip it back, phase out relationships that were not positive, not commit to working things that I wouldn't be passionate about recruiting for and try to open up new sectors that I really enjoy recruiting in.

I now know exactly what I want to do, the types of clients that I want to partner with and most of all, the experience that I want to give during every process.

What have I learnt?

I have learnt a huge amount over the last year, both about myself and running a business.

Firstly, when you are employed by a business, you do not realise how spoilt you are by having other people to help you in lots of different area's. The accounts/finance team, credit control, HR, marketing. All these functions allow you to just focus on being good at your one task. (So be nice to them!)

When you start your own business, you are all of these functions combined, so you need to learn how to do all of these things to the best of your ability. This often means alot of trial and error.

Never count your chickens. Nothing is ever guaranteed and things change at the blink of an eye.

I am sorry to tell you this, but people aren't your friends and more often than not, they don't have your best interests at heart.

You will have plenty of people queuing up to tell you what you should be doing and how you should be doing it when you first start out. Do not allow them to gobble up your precious time! If you wanted to be told what to do and how to do it, you would go and work for someone else again.

Instead, my advise would be to surround yourself with a few good people that make sense to you. These people do not have to be the most experienced, be the richest, or even from the same industry. But just a good, close circle of people that will be genuinely happy for you even if they are not having the same success. People that add value and don't just tell you what you want to hear, but challenge your ideas and poke holes in them so you don't make a mistake.

I have made genuine friends over this last year that wouldn't have been made if it wasn't for starting a business.

Very cheesy I know, but I also have really enjoyed being able to help other people in their start up journey by sharing my experiences and enabling them to avoid some of the mistakes that I made.

Come on, wrap it up now Adam!

I am conscious that this is becoming a long article, but it's a year of my life squeezed into a 5 minute read. There will be bits I have missed I am sure, but I have tried to be as honest as possible and share both the highs and the more challenging times.

To summarise, it has been an amazing year. Did I achieve financially what I wanted to in year 1, no, I am happy to admit that. But the business has made money and has avoided becoming a statistic which is all I can really ask for.

We have a great foundation going into year 2 and looking forward to supporting lots more clients and candidates across the Sales, HR and Recruitment sectors.

Thank you for reading.