10 lessons in 10 years

Building and Running a Recruitment Business – 10 lessons in 10 years

10 years after picking up the phone to make his first business development call in his newly established IT recruitment business we asked Co-founder and Director of Motion Recruitment, Christian Green what he has learnt after a decade of up’s, downs, challenges and successes.

“What are the 10 lessons you would like to impart to any aspiring recruitment business owner? What do you think worked well and what, if anything, would you do differently?”

When we started Motion Recruitment we had no previous business management experience. Myself and partner Brian Hannaford were accomplished recruiters and team managers but beyond that we were really learning as we went along. We certainly made mistakes but 10 years on we evidently got a few things right. Below is a summary of 10 lessons learnt in those 10 years.

1. Start paying yourself a salary early – this one I must attribute to our accountant. In the early days we were lucky enough to make a couple of permanent placements reasonably quickly. Once those fees hit our bank account it was tempting to take the foot off the pedal. Committing to paying ourselves a salary kept us on our toes and created a bit of urgency to keep pushing for those next placements
2. Be careful of your costs – on the flip side we kept things very lean the first year or two. We worked from home (before covid made this a thing), we caught public transport, used basic laptops and were careful about what commitments we made to SAAS vendors. When we did get an office, it was modest and the furniture simple. This meant there wasn’t too much pressure on the P&L and allowed us to save enough money to hire our first staff.
3. Trust the fundamentals – quality, targeted activity – There was a trend in recruitment not long ago (maybe it’s still around) where KPI’s were considered a bad thing. People used to describe some agencies as “KPI shops” and it was meant in a derogatory way. Of course there are good and bad ways to approach this but the reality is that the more quality, targeted activity you do, the more successful you will be. Get your team to trust the fundamentals, pick up the phone, send good CV’s, meet with people and good things will happen.
4. Hire for attitude and potential by recruiting quality juniors – Some people might disagree with me here but the best hires we’ve made have been juniors with no recruitment experience. We were looking for positive attitudes, people who understood recruitment, were brave enough to take on the sales aspect and then we filled them with as much knowledge and guidance as we could. Of course, not everyone works out, recruitment is hard and the need to get results can be unforgiving but providing someone with the tools to make it in a new career is very rewarding. It also carries less risk from a cost perspective and allows you to grow without taking on a huge wage bill
5. Align your expectations with your goals – Like everyone starting a business, I wanted success. I wanted to be financially secure, enjoying the freedom that comes with having money in the bank and the satisfaction of building a successful business. On the flip side, I have interests outside of recruitment and the last 10 years have seen the growth of my family where time with them is now a critical part of my life. Recruitment podcasts are full of nonsense stories from owners claiming to have grown their business to 1,000 consultants in 12 months without picking up the phone or getting out of their bathtub. If you want a 1,000 person recruitment company you need to be incredibly talented and single minded, willing to put in the hours, make sacrifices and take on all the risks and stress associated with that ambition. If you’re not willing to make those sacrifices, I personally think that is OK. Not every business needs to be the next Amazon. Be the judge of your own success. Aligning expectations with goals has allowed me to enjoy the ride and be very proud of our successes.
6. Know your values and unique selling points (USP’s) – A lot of junior recruiters have the same sell. Something along the lines of “we’re the best, we send good CV’s, we’re better than our competitors”. You need to move beyond this and know what actually sets you apart. It took us a while to find this, but once we did we were able to build a brand and identity around it. It helped us attract staff and loyal clients.
7. Be pragmatic – Everyone wants perfect clients at good rates with easy to fill jobs. The reality when building a business is you need to be filling roles and you can’t habitually turn down business if the details aren’t perfect. Being flexible with terms of engagement when the situation permits it, working with difficult clients or on challenging jobs allowed us to get through the first couple of years whilst we built up our capability.
8. Act with integrity and be nice to everyone – It can be easy to get frustrated in recruitment. Whether it is an unreliable candidate, a client that is pressing your buttons, or maybe it is the candidate who calls you all the time that you know you’re never going to be able to place… whatever you do, be nice! Never do or say anything that you wouldn’t appreciate yourself. So many of our clients were candidates 10 years ago who liked our approach and now use us to recruit for their teams
9. Be patient and kind to your staff – The old adage, “look after your staff and they will look after you”could not be truer. Positivity, encouragement, training, support, patience and empathy are so important. One of our best consultants took over 6 months to do their first placement. Another had their billings fall off a cliff after some personal issues but repaid the faith by working her way back to high performance. Provide a positive environment, focus on a new starter’s effort and comprehension rather than their results, never lose your cool and make sure everyone feels supported and you’ll have a team of loyal, trustworthy and reliable people.
10. Document your processes – During Covid we started a recruitment process document that could be used as a reference point for our consultants whilst doing their job. The idea was that they would be able to refer to this document if they needed some guidance on any aspect of their job, giving certainty that they were approaching their role in the right way. What started as a “how to” on best practice grew to include sections about overcoming objections, identifying the best talent, policy documents, marketing materials, company direction, systems use and so on. Whilst initially a time consuming process the benefits have been great.