Are you are a recruitment consultant? If you are there must have been times where you have thought that you should be doing the job for the benefit of your bank balance and not somebody else's! If you have thought about it, but have never gone through with it, then its likely that you haven't because of a lack of funds to get started.

There are more issues than just having a sizeable amount of funds to start up your own recruitment firm. You will need to be willing to take risks and disrupt what could be a relatively secure lifestyle. You also need to consider if running your own business is for you. Before reading on, please be aware that this article is not intended to tell you why you should start up, it's to give you some ideas on how you could fund the opening days if you have taken the plunge.

Whilst reading this article, be aware that you will need to make your own decisions about what you consider to be a reasonable and viable method of raising funds, these examples are based on personal experience and should certainly not be considered to be highly researched advice.

To begin with, you need to think long and hard to decide how much money you are prepared to, or can afford to gamble. You also need to be confident that you can be a successful recruitment consultant on your own and be confident that you can generate vacancies without the backing of a large brand name. If you are already a consultant you should be aware of where and how to advertise and how to select the best candidates. If you know the job and have enough funds to continue the business, you should be profitable in the long run. The key to a start up recruitment consultancy is having the funds to do the job correctly in the first place.

I now manage a major recruitment jobs board, I'm regularly approached by new start ups who plan to only use free advertising until they are established. This is not the best of ideas as they are ultimately competing with companies who are spending thousands of pounds every month on advertising. By doing this, they will fail.

You need to research the costs to run your operation correctly, including advertising and of course money to pay yourself! You need to work out a sum of money to the point where you think you will be profitable, when doing this, be pessimistic with your forecasts and give yourself a few months to spare. Realistically you're likely to need around six months worth of operating costs to get yourself going. There are delays between advertising, recruiting and collecting money, you don't want to fold because you are waiting on money!

Yes, six months costs do sound a lot of money, but in truth you will earn far much more money working for yourself than for somebody else.

When I was searching for funds, my first approach was to go to the local bank and enquire about a business loan. This does require a business plan and a sales pitch to somebody who is unlikely to be qualified to make a good decision. It is however a good exercise to prepare a business plan and present it, it will help your ideas evolve.

Page 1 of 2 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 | Next