How to start a placement / recruitment consultant business? requirement, knowledge, skills, finance,plans?

The best routes to take are to research the process of starting a business as well as the industry you're interested in.

I recommend checking out the SBA, Entrepreneur, The Start Up Journal & Nolo. All 4 are great informational resources for the new/small business owner. I posted links for you in the source box.

Associations may be a good avenue to explore. These organizations will address many of the thoughts, questions and concerns you'll inevitably have as well as many you haven't anticipated yet. See the source box for some relevant links.

Research, research, research 鈥?this cannot be stressed enough. Read as much as you can about the industry. Here are some book titles that are relevant:

* Start Your Own Executive Recruiting Business by Entrepreneur Press
* The Complete Guide to Owning and Operating a Home-Based Recruiting Business: A Step-By-Step Business Plan for Entrepreneurs by Charrissa D. Cawley
* The Recruiter's Almanac of Scripts, Rebuttals and Closes by Bill Radin
* Entrepreneur Magazine's Start Your Own Staffing Service by Krista Thoren Turner

There are plenty of free informational resources out there. Check the source box for links to articles.

Hope that helps! I wish you much success & happiness in all your ventures!

Some details that can help you -

You can start a company by registering the company's name with the necessary govt. bodies as the amount you receive as payment comes with some tax benefits

Requirement: You need to have a large database or you might need to buy it from an existant coonsultant or hire some one from a consultancy who can bring this database to you

Knowledge: Need to know the business requirement of the clients that you are going to handle.
Also need to know how to hunt & bring it to closure

Skills: depends on the market/ industry that you are concentrating on

Finanace: Not a big amount unless you are planning to rent out an office & have several people working for you.
If you want to start small, you can open this at you home & work it out yourself

Plans: Always depends on the objective

When it comes to recruiting your first consultant there are many factors, such as personality, drive, hard work, maturity, professionalism, experience, even the way you train or manage them will have a huge influence on whether they succeed or not.

I am not going to go into what makes a good consultant, I just want to emphasis that your new consultant can be the difference between success and failure.You will need to have enough working capital to carry someone, who will likely not produce anything in their first 3 months, maybe even more. In addition you will hang on thinking they may suddenly produce business, the likely hood is they wont, but they will bring your company down in the process.

The only real way to ensure this doesn鈥檛 happen or at least help limit the damage is to TAKE REFERENCES!! I know that most of you wont bother, because hey you were the top recruitment consultant, right!. Take it from me, if I had checked references I could have avoided some horrendous heart ache.

Your Contacts are Sacred, treat them like So!

The most important asset we have as a recruitment consultants is our database of contacts. Unfortunately we do not protect this data adequately, in fact I am confident that you like me, do not back up this data as regularly as we should or even have a copy at another location, incase of fire.

Now finally with the advances of broadband it is now possible to upload your database of contacts and cv鈥檚 onto a web based server, without it taking a day to achieve. In addition it is not only cheap, it is secure with encryption coding to counter database theft.

Although this may seem the worst thing to do with our sacred data, it is in fact much safer than on your own computer. If you are not convinced then just consider the fact that you are probably already using an online database storage system, for confidential information with the likes of Hotmail or Yahoo, with some of us now uploading photos on to flickr as another example.

So if you don鈥檛 already have online storage in place, then I suggest you do so as soon as possible. If you have your own website then you can up load your data onto your own server using ftp software, or you can use a dedicated site for storing data such as xdrive or omnidrive, and I have just come across Box.net, Inc., if you use Arithon recruitment software then this it is included (excuse the plug) plus the additional confidence in knowing that the data is automatically backed up.

So by having your software stored on a web based server you will know that if ever your office is destroyed by earthquake, or your computer spontaneously catches fire (Remember Dell Laptops) or your data is wiped by a virus and you need to contact a candidate within the next hour, because their interview has been cancelled. You can confidently contact that candidate by loginnig onto your data from another computer, rather than wait until tomorrow, for the IT guy to tell you that you have lost all your data.

keep the recruitment cost down
It may seem obvious but when you start your recruitment business, the money you put aside is never enough, but with careful house keeping you can get it to spread much further, particularly as Banks are not keen to help in your first year.

Apart from salaries and advertising one of the biggest costs will be office space. It isn鈥檛 so much the cost you need to worry about; it is the contract that you sign. I have a huge warning here, avoid contracts that tie you into more than 3 to 6 months you could live to regret it, I learnt this the hard way.

The best strategy is to work from home when you start, and with recent advances in technology and the common use of virtual offices, there really is no need to have a office. OK you may feel the need, but you will be putting the company under a huge strain. Wait 3 to 6 months, get regular business and increase the revenue you have on deposit for a rainy day. When you have built this financial reserve, it may then be worth looking at offices, but consider serviced offices at the start such as Regus. as they enable you to rent office space on a month to month basis, without a huge deposit. Obviously working from home is difficult but if you are motivated to become a successful recruitment consultancy, this shouldn鈥檛 be a distraction.

Company brochures, letter heads, business cards a couple of years back were necessary, but with emails and your own colour printer you can avoid these printing costs. I don鈥檛 think I have ever had a business enquiry from a brochure, in fact when I started I decided that I wouldn鈥檛 buy any letter heads until I sent my first invoice.

So apart from the cost of setting up the company with the accountants and organising relevant company insurance, the only other cost you will have is a computer, a printer, broadband connection, database software, Skype, fax and a phone.

In regards to Skype you can have your own number so that you never miss a call, as it can be redirected wherever you are. I used to use a virtual office to do this, but they took so long in answering and not passing on the message, it was safer not to use them, and of course I saved money in the process. There are alternatives, but I have only used Skype and I have been more than happy, although the quality could have been better for mobiles. Saying all that the fact you can manage calls and see who is calling you certainly makes you more efficient.

Recruitment Software is really worth the investment, as it will save you at least 2 hours per day, even against a general contact database such as ACT or Maximiser and it doesn鈥檛 need to be expensive. I used to use Arithon, which at 拢50 per month, makes it very easy to budget for. (Please note having used Arithon for the last 2 years, I am now their Sales Manager)

The only other big expense is advertising, and it can be so easy to waste money if you get it wrong. I will assume that you will have some idea what works, as an ex Recruitment Consultant or Manager, but what I do suggest is you look at other means of advertising without spending a penny, as it will make you a better Consultant at the same time.

So to finish the only area you should spend as much as possible, is on telephone calls, as this will directly relate to money in your pocket and don鈥檛 forget if you look after the pennies the pounds will look after themselves.