Many new businesses have been booming ever since the onset of COVID-19, and so has the demand for recruiting potential candidates. Hence, now is the ideal time to start your recruitment agency. Our article will explore all about how to scale your recruitment startup/business.
What Is a Scaleup Phase?
Scale-up is a period when a company’s growth increases at a faster rate than usual. A company often needs a quick ‘scaleup’ either after receiving a new round of funding from investors or launching a new product. This phase is not the most significant stage of the company’s growth but demands the most focus from employees.
Some challenges that the company faces during the scaleup phase are:
- Determining the right time to scale
- Managing scaleup time and cost
- Staying in the market’s competition
- Hiring developers for the startup or other staff for appropriate roles
- Maintaining the company’s work culture
Startups are usually more concerned about managing their time and cost during the scaleup phase.
From Startup to Scaleup
Before starting a recruitment agency, ask yourself the following questions:
Does your personality go well with what is needed in the recruiting field? Recruiting requires a lot of networking and engagement. Being a shy bean won’t help.
Do you have experience in recruitment or consultation? Are you aware of all the responsibilities of recruiters? Will you be able to handle constant market pressure?
Do you have an entrepreneurial mindset? Are you open to innovations and suggestions?
Do you have a budget to start with? Maybe it won’t be easy to arrange funds for your startup early, so you will need to make personal investments.
Have you ever wondered about any ‘Plan B’ if your startup doesn’t work? Do you want to start with a remote recruitment agency or a physical one?
Go ahead once you have answered these questions and believe that the recruitment field is for you! Then, work on your recruitment startup. Now you have your startup, it’s time to scale your business.
10 Steps to Scale a Recruitment Startup (Business):
1. Evaluate Your Company Needs
As the owner of your recruitment startup, you must know what will be required to meet clients’ needs. Here are some tools that you must have:
A website: The website is a landing page for clients and candidates. An SEO-optimized professional website helps in the company’s branding and increases its credibility in the market.
Job boards subscription: Apart from posting job advertisements on your website, purchasing a recruiter subscription to some trusted job sites is recommended. Sites like LinkedIn have a pool of job seekers. It will help your advertisement to get in front of many potential candidates.
Recruitment software: This is a must. As a startup, you can not waste time doing repetitive tasks every day. Hence having access to an applicant tracking system will help you streamline the entire hiring process to focus on other essential tasks.
Recruiting network: Networking includes connections with qualified candidates and clients who might need your help in recruitment in the future.
Now, it is imperative to address a pertinent aspect of LinkedIn networking, and that is keeping your web of connections relevant and updated. This is why learning how to remove LinkedIn connections properly and in bulks is integral to having a relevant pool of contacts with minimal noise.
There are many things to optimize your work to its best. But, again, taking guidance from someone who has experience in this field or maybe a consultant will be helpful.
See Also: 11 Software Startup Ideas for 2022
2. Create a Structured Workflow
Now that you have all the necessary resources create a structured workflow for your recruitment startup. Plan out how you will make money. How will you approach clients? What services will you provide? The niche do you want to work in?
It is vital to answer these questions and map out how your startup will produce the profit you seek. Then, finally, decide on your business structure that inclines with your vision, services, and resources.
3. Value + Cultural Fit = Blast
Lately, many companies have been focusing on improving the overall experience at work by integrating work into their life. By defining your startup’s culture and values, you can improve operations, nurture contributions from every employee, and gain greater personal satisfaction.
A company can achieve success only when its employees value their work. By improving the work culture while focusing on the key values, you can ensure support from your staff, candidates, and clients.
See Also: How Do I Create a Startup Business Plan?
4. Build Your Employer Brand
Strong employer branding helps recruiters to attract more clients and candidates. It is not about misleading people to perceive your startup in a positive light.
It is all about defining who you are and making you the best choice among your competitors. Creating authentic employer branding takes a lot of effort, but it is worth it.
Your employer branding can:
- Help you make your market among your competitors.
- It helps retain your best employees.
- Reduce cost-per-hire
- Increases credibility
Ways to improve your employer branding:
- Prioritize building your employer brand and make it a central part of your recruitment marketing
- Focus on building a good work culture for your employees.
- Meet the requirements of your clients on time and budget allocated.
- Keep candidate experience as your priority
- Tell your story
- Be active on social media. Make your presence visible.
- Network with like-minded people
- Attend public events
- Using different marketing strategies to reach a wider audience.
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5. Networking Is Crucial
Talent acquisition is all about networking. As much as you connect with people, you are ahead in this field. Networking can be done either online or offline, and both as to its pros and cons.
While online networking helps you reach global talents and clients, offline networking ensures your place in people’s contact lists.
Here are a few ways to build strong networking:
- Host and attend events. It is the perfect place to meet many like-minded people.
- Let your employer brand speak for itself
- Make a note of people you want to include in your client’s list in future
- Listen and build a rapport among clients and candidates
- Give them a reason to approach you next time
6. Track Your ROI
Tracking your startup’s Return On Investment (ROI) and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) can help you determine:
- Quality of hires: Through detailed data of applicants, you can determine what talents are more in demand among your clients and start building your talent pipeline around them. Consider raising the number of qualified and interested candidates to have significant ROI.
- Soft metrics: This includes improved brand reputation, number of leads generated and interviewed, time spent building your recruitment funnel, etc. The better the soft metrics, the more the ROI.
- Cost-per-hire: Analyze how much more investment is required and where you have spent carelessly. Lesser the cost-per-hire, more the ROI.
- Time-per-hire: In the recruitment field, less time and better results are appreciable; recruiters should improve this metric.
7. Invest in Staff and Resources
To regulate your startup’s workflow, you need to hire people who have the same vision as you. For example, you might need administrative staff, marketing staff, recruiters, and consultants. Depending on your business model and niche, your staffing requirements can differ from other startups.
You can be a “solo operator,” but that becomes quite difficult to start with. So instead, invest in the right resources – research your marketplace. Try your hands-on demo versions of different software and choose one that suits your company’s needs.
See Also: How Can I Start a Business with Little Capital?
8. Keep Eyes on Your Competitors
Whatever niche your startup works with must have some competitors. You can not compare your business with established large firms but always look for their workflow.
It will deliver you some ideas of the steps you need to incorporate in your hiring process to get more clients or meet the requirements of existing ones. Carving out space among competitors is challenging, but dedication and consistency are required to achieve milestones.
Identify your strengths and weaknesses. Know what differentiates you from your competitors. Explore the marketplace and think about that x-factor that you can add to your plan to be unique.
The best way to surpass your competitors is to create a strong identity in the market. The best way to create your market is to reach out to various startups who can not afford the services of big staffing firms. Providing them with your services will help you get started and build genuine relationships with them. It is small but significant to kickstart your recruitment startup.
9. Recruitment Marketing
A solid recruitment marketing plan is needed for running a successful recruitment startup. There are three things you need to consider.
Companies you want to connect with to market your services: This will depend on your company’s niche, your team members’ specialties, and the market’s demand. First, prepare a list of the companies that might need your services and then approach them with the method that suits both sides.
Candidates whom you will market: Having a talent pipeline, in this case, is beneficial, but if you have don’t have one, assembling one is recommended.
Methods to market your services: For proper marketing of your brand, you will need at least the following things ready:
- A professional website
- Social media accounts
- An email ID (For email campaign)
- A blog
- Job board’s recruiter subscriptions.
- Advertisements
- Making Video content nowadays is in trend; hence, using it will help you reach a wider audience.
See Also: 9 Best Influencer Marketing Tools
10. Be Unique
There are more than 300 million startups worldwide. But not all of them are successful. Marketplace follows the phrase ‘survival of the fittest.’ Till there is not something unique in your startup, no one will care. Success comes to only two types of businesses:
- Ones that are first to do something or second, best in doing something. Hence, be unique.
- Find out something that others aren’t doing yet. Like, if no recruiter is using TikTok, you do it! Create your market.
A startup may not have resources and a budget like established recruitment firms, but it doesn’t mean it’s the end. A little consistent effort can help startups achieve their dream. Lacking a fund can never be a reason to blow off your passion and motivation. Try all the points mentioned in the article to scale your business’s growth and keep finding more.
