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TBOS wrote an article back in January 2016 titled “6 Reasons Non-Recruiters Should Not Start A Recruitment Agency” which was written to try and stop the number of enquiries that we were receiving on a weekly basis from Non-Recruiters looking to start their own recruitment agency. We often have to explain that successful recruiting is not something that can be picked up overnight.

However, this article was picked up by the Google algorithm and so when you search in “Start Up Recruitment Agency” on Google, this article appears on page 1 and has been our most popular blog ever - we often receive more than 500 visits per week to our website as a result of people reading this article. If you read the article you will see that we are trying to explain that recruitment is not as easy as it looks and if you’re trying to start your own business as well, you will find that it becomes twice as hard and will often be unsuccessful.

However, even though the exposure of this article is driving people to our website, it still appears that non-recruiters are not listening to the advice within it and are still calling into our office to try and convince us that they can start their own recruitment agency, despite having zero recruitment experience.  We do know that there are some success stories that you will hear of a non-recruiter who now runs a successful agency but in our experience these are few and far between.  TBOS has also set up many recruitment agencies over the past 7 years and have seen some fail even in the hands of heavily experienced and knowledgeable recruiters.

We also know that there are companies out there that profess that they can “Teach the Recruitment Process” in a 4-5 day course or will charge an obscene amount of money to mentor a non-recruiter on how to make a placement. Be wary as these have no guarantees and in our experience the recruitment process can only really be taught by working in an agency as a recruiter (not in admin or in compliance) for a significant period of time.

The most common type of non-recruiter phone call we get is from Nurses/ Social Carers that want to start their own agency.  Often they have been a contractor/temp on various recruitment agencies books and have a wide network of other nurses and various clients they have worked for over the years, which they believe they can utilise and capitalise on through their own agency.  However, often their telephone manner and sales presence doesn’t portray that they are a recruiter and as they are primarily seasoned care givers, they often do not have the bite to make the transition.  Furthermore, the reason many nurses will want to start their own agency is that they believe the agencies are making an unfair margin from them. What they do not realise is that the agency has to cover their holiday pay, employers NI, pension contribution, insurances and the costs of funding their PAYE pay before the client pays the agency.  Once they have that realisation and the understanding about the compliance required to make a placement they often agree that the process is not as easy as they initially thought.

Another set of non-recruiters we regularly receive enquiries from are site managers within the construction industry.  Often then will say they are already finding the staff for various construction projects and managing the manpower on site and therefore they want to be the agency in the middle and make some additional money from this project.  However, once we start explaining about CIS deductions and the fact that we would need them to become a full time recruiter instead of doing it alongside site management, this usually changes their mind.

The last type of non-recruiter we often hear from are IT managers or IT project managers.  These type of non-recruiters are probably the most likely to succeed as a new recruitment agency as they have the knowledge about the skill sets of candidates required and understand timescales and charge rates.  However, they still need to have a basic understanding of recruitment and the contractual processes involved, as well as the sales acumen to be able to sign deals with clients through their agency.

TBOS will always speak to any person who enquires about our service and we will always try our best to help someone to start their own recruitment agency.  However, before calling our office we would hope that they have seriously thought about what type of business they are hoping to create, which industry they will provide staff into and how they will get the clients and candidates to fulfil the placements.  One thing that TBOS always professes is that we do not teach the recruitment process as part of our solution; our service is to provide a comprehensive back office and accountancy service, leaving the recruitment process to be handled by the recruiter/director.

For more information on how TBOS can help and advise you on how to start your own recruitment agency, then please do not hesitate to call us.