How to Start a Staffing and Recruitment Consulting Agency - A Complete Guide

Have you ever considered a new business idea or consulting career into uncharted territory? Perhaps starting a staffing company? The mere thought of taking the plunge can often feel very intimidating particularly start a temp agency from home and you're unsure of where the whole idea might land. The entrepreneurship world is packed with endless unknowns, particularly if it is your first time in that specific industry or sector-it can scare you enough to even hinder you from taking that important first business step.

The goal of employment and recruitment consulting firms is to help match employers who have job openings with qualified employees who are available. Going by different names such as recruitment agencies or staffing agencies, this type of business or industry can be found in big cities and small towns giving support to lots of different industries or organizations.

The objective of this comprehensive guide is to bring to the fore in a transparent manner what and how to start a staffing agency or consulting business entails when you are completely new to the consulting industry and fully in charge of the staffing venture. This is your ultimate guide to creating and starting a recruiting and staffing consulting firm.

To start a staffing company may appear to be a straightforward transaction or business undertaking. You need just a couple of employees, there's no huge inventory to acquire, and you could even start your staffing consulting business from the convenience! There are, however, plenty of things and steps to be considered before your staffing and consulting business is ready to take staffing orders from clients or even face your first candidate. This article is designed to guide you if you are thinking about how to start a staffing agency online or establishing a brick and mortar recruitment consulting company.

Starting a Staffing consulting Agency - What Do You Need

So, you are determined in terms of starting your own staffing consulting and recruiting agency - excellent business idea. Remember that entrepreneurship in any industry comes with lots of ups and downs, many quite unexpected and the same is true of staffing agencies. Even when you have a great love for what you are intending to do, your consulting business won't succeed with passion alone. You not only need to be fully committed for the long-haul but also have an in-depth understanding of every possible staffing situation, business downturn, or even points of frustration which you could be transformed into a growth opportunity. And that is what this article intends to equip and guide you with as you enter this potentially lucrative consulting agencies industry.

Let's first look at the basic staffing and consulting business requirements and areas that you will need to focus on when starting your consulting and recruiting agency in your new industry.

Get your Staffing Business Registered and Licensed

Perhaps you have explored the business plan or ideas on running agencies, or may be actively considering taking the plunge from your modest in-house temp recruiting to starting full consulting. Step one is obviously to get your staffing business registered. Before starting, learn all the relevant local requirements for that appertain to getting the appropriate business licenses, contact your local business bureau or check online. Then proceed to register the name of your staffing recruiting agency at the designated office, file your business articles of incorporation, and pay all fees.
Some of the key staffing business registration requirements for this consulting and recruiting agencies industry before starting include:

• A business name
• A qualified accountant
• Money for fees
• Business Banking account
• Insurance cover
• A place to work
• Website.

You may, in addition, need to obtain extra staffing licensing to place employees legally in select specialized sectors or an industry like health care. Before you start the staffing or recruitment consulting agency, it is prudent to consult your local business bureau or licensing office regarding special staffing licensing information. They can also advise and guide you on ideas, business and industry approach strategies.

Obtain Legal Counsel that Understands How to Open a Staffing Agency

A larger portion of investment when starting recruitment agencies will go into getting suitable legal counsel to ensure proper due diligence on clients and employees. It is important to make sure that the legal counsel you employ understands staffing and the consulting business as well as all the relevant national and provincial legislation dealing with the staffing and recruiting agencies industry. This way, you are sure of them giving good guide tips.

Such legal counsel will assist you in terms of the requisite staffing consulting business documentation before starting operations in this industry. Some these will include:

• Employment Agreements
• Workplace Violence and Harassment Policy
• Termination & Layoff Clauses
• Disciplinary Policy
• Health & Safety Policy
• Client Service Agreements.

Secure Staffing and Recruitment Consulting Business Insurance

Most clients will want to see proof that your staffing agency has in place some insurance in case one of your temp workers cause damage as they work for their company, industry or site. Getting affordable insurance capable of meeting the needs of your clients is imperative. Talk to a reputable insurance company that understands your staffing, recruiting and consulting operations to ensure you remain covered for all manner of possible insurance situations before starting any consulting or recruiting agency or agencies as they can guide you.

Finding Your Staffing Consulting Business Niche

Staffing and recruiting services have traditionally been operating across all employment sectors. However, increasingly staffing consulting services can now be seen operating within a single niche market. The growing number of specializations existing today in the staffing industry is making the staffing industry more complex.

Also, beware of special niches existing within a single staffing or recruiting sector. If for example, you plan to start staffing agency that focuses on clerical and office positions, you will discover that it's possible to even specialize further. For example, you may decide to only provide midlevel administrative support staffing needs to only select Fortune 500 companies. Other examples worth looking into include recruiting for finance or legal personnel staffing if your location has many accounting or legal firms.

As you plan and look into the above staffing and recruiting business niche possibilities, take some time before starting and consider the following important staffing and recruiting factors as they can guide your choices and strategies in the recruiting industry:

Past Consulting and Recruiting Experience

If you happen to have a background or previous experience in a specific field or sector, this could turn out to be a greatly advantageous. You will not only be able to assess job applicants better in that particular field, but the experience also lends much credibility to your recruitment business. The other great benefit is that you will be feeling more comfortable because you are doing business in an industry that you understand well or have sufficient experience in. You will still need to carry out your staffing market and industry research prior to starting out in this employee recruiting industry. Understand the employees and clients industry well to be successful.

Staffing Demographics and Psychographics

The most common structure when it comes to starting a staffing agencies or recruitment consulting business is to acquire a small office staffed by a handful of employees who do the recruitment of candidates and selling employment services to businesses operating in the local area. The composition of your staffing or recruiting consulting services agency should be determined by the demographic and psychographics of the area you intend to specialize in. In general, staffing agencies should make sure they are adhering to the country's labor laws.

Competition in the Staffing Consulting Services Industry

The competition level in this industry will by a large degree depends on the location of your business and of course your chosen staffing consulting niche. If for instance, you start your own staffing agency and it is the only one dealing with recruiting nurses for the home care industry in the whole location, you can be sure of monopolizing that staffing aspect right from when you are starting.

Whatever the case, it pays to be prepared and have ready strategies to face all manner of competition, either as you set up or later as you begin recruiting.

Local Staffing Industry Demand and Supply

Staffing and consulting agencies need both clients and temporary employees to survive. Before choosing your niche, ensure you know what types of jobs opportunities are available in your location as well as the supply of potential staffing labor. If for example your town 10 factories, you cannot afford to rule out the potential for industrial placements.

Before you start a staffing company or recruiting services, plan a visit to your location's chamber of commerce website so that you may get to know more about the top companies and industries in the area.

Economic Feasibility

Occasionally, a staffing consulting market niche that would appear to be the natural option given your background may not be feasible due to the financial implications. For example, you might be a medical professional with experience in clinical services but choose not to set up a medical staffing business because of its rather steep start-up financial demands. In addition, nursing homes, hospitals, and other medical facilities generally tend to pay after 1 to 3 months. In that case, you may decide to try your hand in higher-end clerical recruitment instead.

Different Types of Staffing Consulting Agencies

Having covered a staffing agency or consulting business in its broadest sense, here are the different types to help you plan your recruiting strategies.

• Temporary staffing agencies
• Long-term staffing agencies
• Temp-to-perm staffing agencies
• Contingency Search Firms
• Executive Search Firms.

While it's important and helpful to understand the existing distinctions among these different types of staffing consulting services, you can now easily start a staffing agency from home that offers all these services combined under one roof.

Starting a Temp Agency from Home

A temporary agency employs individuals who are trained in specific fields to work for other businesses through short-term contracts or assignments. This is a very hands-on type of environment as clients and employees may contact you any hour of the night or day throughout for a variety of reasons. When starting a temp recruiting and staffing consulting agency from your home, it is important that the staffing or consulting business is structured in such as to maintain your home's privacy while still keeping in contact with your consulting clients.

In terms of choosing whether to rent or lease staffing recruitment office space, what should guide all your strategies is your business budget.

Important steps in setting up staffing/consulting business include:

• Visiting your local zoning office.
• Get insurance coverage and all vital staffing business licenses employees!
• Obtain worker's compensation and important consulting and business tax details even for employees.
• Acquire a dedicated or private phone line for your staffing agency.
• Plan on purchasing ads in the local radio stations or local paper for promoting your new consulting agency to find new or additional employees or consulting clients.
• Consider accepting online applications from potential employees. This helps in keeping employees and clients away from your private home and offers security.
• Organize meetings with human resources managers and executives; explain the working of your staffing consulting business and the benefits that come with temp employees.
• Keep yourself accessible so that staffing consulting clients and employees can inform you in case of no-show employees or any other staffing or recruiting incidents that need your immediate action.

If you want to run a staff consulting and recruiting firm of medium scale, experts suggest that you will need at least 10 key staff when starting. Of course, there may be times when you may need to go further and engage experts to assist you in recruiting high profile employees.

In all probability, when you are just starting consulting, finances may be limited or your staffing consulting business structure still growing and unable to retain all the recruitment professionals full-time hence why it is important to partner with other recruiting experts operating as freelancers. Locate your staffing consulting office near where potential clients are operating and identify a convenient spot for interviewing temporary workers or future external employees.

Get Latest Applicant Tracking & Payroll Processing Systems

Once your staffing business is rolling, you will need to plan how to begin paying your contract workers employees on a regular basis: weekly, bi-weekly or every month. On top of that, you have to regularly remit both the employer and employee taxes. Options to handle all these technical consulting aspects include either outsourcing a professional business payroll processing provider or hiring an in-house payroll administrator.

It is possible to use Microsoft Office as you are starting out but soon you are going to need some more robust staffing and recruiting tools geared to boosting the efficiency of your staffing agency. Ensure that you research the available tools as well as technical support, functionality, and cost.

Staffing Client Credit Checks

Clients credit checking is perhaps one of the most important components of the entire process of your taking on all your new clients. A credit check on clients informs you how long it takes a particular client to clear invoices on average and whether they could be experiencing financial stress. Don't unintentionally plan to be part of those waiting to be paid or those that never saw their money after offering consulting or legal services.

Give your Expertise and Consulting Time

There is a very reason why recruiters are referred to as 'Consultants'. Some of the leading recruiters end up developing lots of industry expertise and knowledge which they openly share that openly with many of their clients. Hiring managers and industry owners need access to experts they can easily contact to seek guidance and discuss the latest trends in salary rates, resources, legal issues on recruiting, consulting, employee availability and so on. Become that person to whom your clients can confidently turn to consulting, and remember to do that for free - you will reap the benefits in the long-run. You will be amazed at the referral this approach can bring to your brand, especially if you are starting a recruitment agency or consulting firm in an area that is untapped.

Develop Relationships

As you prepare on how to start an online staffing agency, remember that when it comes to recruitment, developing personal relationships is everything. Spend time off-net getting to personally know your key clients. When funds allow, take potential clients for lunch as you sell your staffing business ideas to them, call them weekly just to say hello, invite them to a game of golf, share useful information with them even before thy ask. While these business tactics may appear obvious, the art of building relationships is disappearing slowly in many recruitment sectors as it becomes too automated.

Experiment and be Flexible with your Consulting Terms

When starting a temp agency from home, it is important that during the initial period you don't become too fixated with your business Terms and Costs. Of course, this necessarily doesn't mean you should go giving discounts everywhere, but it's good to become creative and try experimenting with different arrangements in attempts at finding what works best for your clients and yourself. Engage clients in discussions on retainers, fixed fee arrangements, exclusivity, etc. You will be pleasantly amazed at the kind of deals or ideas that you can get by offering a more personalized kind of staffing service, each customized to the needs of individual clients.

Steps on How to Start an Employment Agency from Home

Starting a staffing business that cost much money may appear to be an intimidating undertaking, but the key lies in staying organized. By following the simple guidelines described below on how to start a staffing agency from home or in a leased office, you'll be positioning yourself for success.

1. Gain some experience: Lots of people launch a staffing business with very little or zero experience in this competitive industry. Try and gain some experience or basic knowledge about the industry before you start.

2. Research all governmental requirements: plan for and look into aspects like areas licenses, taxes as well as workers' compensation.

3. Have a viable cash flow analysis: During the first year of your consulting, put into place a realistic estimation of your cash flow needs. Take into account all staffing business overheads to avoid potential pitfalls towards the close of the year. It is important to determine your staffing business income and expenses, from there calculate the amount of much cash needed to operate your operations on a daily basis.

4. Consult industry and business experts: Free counsel is always available. Talk to others who have also started a staffing firm. Talk to business owners not operating in your geographic area or the chosen recruiting niche to avoid unnecessary competition.

5. Develop a niche: This allows you to stay updated on current staffing consulting trends and needs in the chosen niche and also limits levels of competition.

6. Hit the streets. Use all the contacts you have to bring in employees and clients and if you lack these, hit the streets and knock on doors.

Locating your Staffing Agency

'Location, Location, Location' - You may be forgiven for thinking that this is something only found in the real estate business sector. It is, however, equally true when applied to the staffing and recruitment consulting industry. Office location matters a lot, and generally speaking, operating from home is the best idea except when you are grappling with how to start a staffing agency with no money or at low cost. Ideally, you need a professional atmosphere to conduct your consulting business like testing applicants, interviewing and training candidates as well as for holding business meetings with clients.

So when looking for a suitable location for your new staffing consulting firm, make sure it's located in an area that is easily accessible and visible, probably in the business hub of your city. Your applicant ought to easily locate your staffing office when seeking to submit their CVs, or coming for background checks. Your staffing clients should easily locate you and drive there with no difficulty.

As you work out how to open a staffing agency and scope out possible locations, consider all of the following business-related factors:

• Image: Depending on the clientele you want to serve, location can be very important. For instance, for the legal consulting profession, image is everything and you may want to locate your staffing office in an upscale area. You also want to project the image of professionalism in tour staffing consulting business.
• Proximity to client: Often choosing your business office location on the basis of the clientele you wish to attract pays. If you want to serve McDonald's, placing your office close by may be a good idea!
• Accessibility: Your consulting business location must be easily accessible to your potential staffing employees and clients. It makes no sense locating your business where those who want plan to reach your office must hire a taxi cab.
• Economic Feasibility: Your staffing office location must make economic sense. Go for a location that contributes to minimizing business overhead.
• Possibility for expansion: Always consider and hope that your consulting business and brand will grow. Therefore choose a location that has room for potential expansion as moving is expensive. To plan ahead is to be successful
• Lease flexibility: When starting small, it's an excellent idea to consider taking up temporary space for an initial couple of months. If you feel the decision to start a staffing business is not your idea, then you won't find yourself locked into a binding long lease.

Starting a Staffing Agency - Promotion Strategies

Marketing is vital for any business, especially a new consulting startup. Here are several advertising strategies that you can adopt or modify to suit your specific promotion goals and the cost you are ready to incur:

• Brochures - This is a recognized staffing brand advertising vehicle.

• Direct mailing - Choose your list in such a way that it focuses on those organizations and companies whose industry sector and size make them potential staffing clients.

• The Internet - Well-crafted electronic business ads place on select bulletin boards are an effective method, especially when they are industry-specific.

• Newspapers. This traditional tool is useful for select staffing industry sectors.

• Specialty publications. Helpful when you're staffing consulting agency is targeting specific types of organizations or brands.

• Telephone - Your consulting and staffing business can use this to get in touch with existing clients to alert them about available applicants. An effective business tool of generating additional business.

• Select Business &Trade Journals/Publications - Effective for targeting professional clients and technical sectors.

• Word-of-mouth - Perhaps the best method of brand advertising, most credible and certainly one of the least expensive.

• Yellow Pages - Ads placed on Yellow Pages are effective when you want to recruit employees though not very good for attracting clients.

Financing a Recruitment Agency Business

The most important and greatest expense for a recruitment consulting agency goes to employee payroll. Employees have to be paid on time and regularly otherwise they may seek employment elsewhere. Your staffing agency business will, in addition, need to have funds that are sufficient to pay for relevant employment taxes as well as other employee associated expenses. Tax compliance is another issue that a staffing business has to deal with and to fail can cost you much money and could even put you out of work besides having to pay penalties.

Starting Recruiting Agencies - Financing Options

When starting a recruitment agency, much needs to be done and you cannot afford to relax. To get suitable financing will require perseverance, diligence, and great wisdom in identifying the best financing option for your new staffing business. Today, however, securing business credit can be easier than many would assume.

Assuming you have now fully registered your staffing business, obtained licenses, have ready employees, and secured all applicable insurance certificates, you are now ready to roll. However, before you proceed to apply for all available business loans, sit down and carefully go through your business plan. Take a detailed look at the projected business operating costs over the initial 6 to 12 months including how long you are expecting to be operating before you begin turning a profit.
Here are some of the options on how to start a staffing company when it comes sourcing for business financing.

Small Business Loan

If you are considering how to start a temp agency with no money or limited saved funds, the Small Business Administration is implementing strategies designed to make loans available for wider range of small businesses. However, similar to any standard loan, the process of small business loan underwriting can take anything from a couple of weeks to several months. It might also entail pledging collateral - something that might not be possible for a new staffing agency. While some of the application and approval criteria have recently been relaxed, it remains it is incredibly difficult for new businesses or those with less than perfect credit rating to qualify for this type of loan.

The main drawback associated with small business loan is that even if you qualify you are not guaranteed that what will get approved is the amount you need to comfortably operate your staffing business. In addition, there is no way of ensuring that interest rate is going to be low enough as to justify the debt appearing on your new business balance sheet.

Unsecured Business Loan

Also referred to as a business cash advance, an unsecured business loan is basically a short-term financing option that gives you the financial cushion you need to get the staffing agency started. Unsecured business loans don't demand any form of collateral, although they require business bank statements of at least 3 months. While this may not be the best option for new business, if your recruitment agency can supply those needed bank statements, they offer a reasonable financing option.

Private/Angel Investor

Private investment may typically assume several forms such as stock options or a friend or family member contribution. It is always tricky business navigating money contributions coming from a family member or friend, particularly when you consider the risk of your business not succeeding and them losing their contribution. This avenue of financing should be approached with care and very candid communication.

Another mode of private business investment that gaining popularity is financing from an 'angel investor'. This is a person who gets sufficiently motivated by the business concept and plans you have and is ready to contribute some hard cash into the business.

In their own standing, angel investors are tricky enough, though also advantageous. Usually, there is no pre-existing connection with them on a personal level, which a useful angel when it comes to negotiating agreements and contracts. Typically, these categories of investors also have access to more funds compared to your typical relative or friend. However, the trick comes in terms of convincing an unknown angel investor to trust you and take their chances with their money on your business. This certainly calls for a well-drafted business plan along with convincing financial projections that guarantee near-future success.

Consulting Business Growth Impossible Without Funds

Once you start a recruitment agency, one of the biggest challenges you are likely to face is ensuring that your employees get paid on time and accurately. The consequences for your brand and business are sadly understandable if this fails to happen. As a new startup, what you need the least is to constantly worry about having to pay your employees (and other overheads). You need financial freedom so that you can concentrate on building other aspects of the new business.

The majority of government and commercial clients generally clear their invoices after a month or even 60 days. For most agencies, this time frame could pose a serious business and financial challenge. Remember you need to pay your corporate business overheads during that period before the invoices are cleared by your respective clients.

The only way your business will grow is if you got adequate money sources or reserves capable of meeting all your corporate expenses. It goes without saying that when you have larger contracts you are going to need a reserve that is larger. Without a reserve, you certainly will not be in a position to take up any new contracts. When you cannot take on board new contracts, your growth will be stifled.

Include in your overall financial plan and budget extra start-up cash that you will utilize in paying your external employees. Most likely, you will have to arrange how to pay your employees before you get paid by the clients. In your business financial forecast, establish your payment plan overall pricing, including details such as hourly pay rates in case you have engaged external employees, the markup percentages to be charged to clients as well as your gross margin target percentages.

Starting a staffing agency from home - Possible Threats and Challenges

To start a temp staffing agency requires hard work but is well worth your effort and time if you love the recruitment industry. Among the major challenges likely to be faced when setting up a new staffing business is the possibility of competing with well - established consulting firms offering similar staffing services like yours. The only route to avoid or overcome this type of business challenge is by creating your own niche market; focus on providing services to start - ups who may not be in a position of affording the high-end fees being charged by the big and established forms.

The majority of start-up temp staffing agencies don't even realize they have to pay their temp workers out of pocket as they wait for the clients to honor the invoices, something that can take even 60 days. Securing the adequate payroll financing is possibly your biggest single challenge towards securing your staffing business startup success. A healthy cash flow is critical for business survival.

Be Aware of All Relevant Laws

When looking into how to start a temp agency from home options, it is up to you to ensure your staffing company follows both national and local labor laws. While knowing the national laws on employment is important, some may become more complicated when you apply them specifically to the staffing and recruitment industry.
Some business and labor laws related to recruiting labor you may need to get familiar with include:

• Official Wage and Hour Rates
• Non-Discrimination Guidelines
• State/Provincial Law on Workers' Compensation and Unemployment Insurance
• Locality-Specific Labor Laws
• Business Taxation.

Final Thoughts

Whether you are looking into how to start an online staffing agency or an office-based business, this is a potentially very viable business option for those who love the task of matching personnel to appropriate companies and jobs. Through opening a recruiting agency, you are helping those seeking employment to get temporary or permanent work in your area or elsewhere. You are also helping businesses to get the right candidates suitable for job openings they have.

It's important, however, to realize the degree of responsibility you are taking on towards businesses and employees you are recruiting when you start your own staffing agency. You must put in place appropriate staffing business measures to not only streamline the entire hiring process but also ensure that everybody is happy with the service being offered by your recruitment business. A happy client is the surest route to a good Return-On-Investment on your staffing consulting business.

With the right tools, information and a good plan, there is absolutely no reason why your small staffing consulting and recruiting business can grow, thrive, be successful, and compete with other well-established players in the industry. A good plan is all you require for a successful consulting recruitment company that will be the envy of many in the recruiting agencies industry.

An article by Dougles Chan - Recruitment Guru. A Business Coach that specialized on coaching recruitment agencies & staffing agencies. Author of 8 books. 25 years in business coaching in recruitment and staffing agencies. Training recruitment business owners in Singapore, USA, UK, and Australia. He specialized business, sales, marketing, digital marketing, 360 recruitment process, SEO, SEM, and social media recruiting. For 121 recruitment coaching, kindly check here.

Recruitment Website Design - 5 Ways to Build a Recruitment Website (A Strategy and Buying Guide)

Who should read this article?

Anyone who owns a recruitment company, recruitment website or job board, or anyone who may need to have a recruitment agency website or job board developed or re-developed.

Introduction

Some time ago, we carried out some research into typical costs required in order to build a recruitment website. We spoke to a number of different suppliers and asked what they usually charge for a fairly standard recruitment website.

We thought we'd asked everyone for just about the same thing. So we expected to get prices which were at least in the same ball-park. Instead, we got prices ranging from around £500 to over £20,000. Which is quite a big difference - in anyone's book.

At the same time, we did some searching on the internet to see what recruitment agencies might find if they tried to find either a toolkit or a supplier for developing recruitment websites. Again, we found a huge range of different options, each with their own pros and cons.

To be perfectly honest, even we got confused by the number of different options, approaches and prices that were out there. So this got us thinking: "If it's this confusing for US, then what on earth must it feel like for our clients when they start to look at this?!"

To combat this, we decided to put this article together to help recruiters make some sense of all the options, and to distil all those different possibilities into 5 main categories or approaches. Most importantly, we wanted to explain the advantages and disadvantages of each approach to help companies make a better buying decision for their business.

Here, for your convenience (and perhaps bed-time reading!) are those different approaches in as small a nutshell as we could possibly manage:

Approach 1: Extreme DIY

This is where YOU the business owner or recruiter (i.e. any non-technical person with no previous web development experience) decides 'hey!, I don't wanna fork out loads of money for a recruitment website, I'm gonna build the thing myself - can't be that difficult'.

There a several different tools you could try using in order to build your website this way:

1. You could use a free (open source) tool like WordPress to build a basic site;

2. You could use a paid-for 'website builder' which is a service or tool offered by some web hosting companies that allows you to install and setup a website based on certain templates or layout styles;

3. You could use a slightly more advanced website-building content management utility like Joomla! Or Drupal. These free code libraries enable you start putting together a website using components or modules which have already been built and tested by developers of the framework;

4. You could learn how to use a fully-fledged website coding language like ASP.Net or php and buy the books and tools necessary to learn how to develop, edit, organise and/or compile these languages into a website.

The single advantage of this type of solution is: it's dirt cheap. At least, it won't cost you much from a financial point of view. But the bad news is it will almost certainly cost you a fair bit of time.

Whichever way you look at it, the main problem with all the options listed above and this overall approach is that you would be a trying to do a job which is not really your specialism or in which you have no previous experience. The result? You'll spend countless hours trying to be a web developer instead of concentrating on the business of recruitment. There are some other disadvantages to these methods too:

* Unless you have some previous design experience, you'll need to rely in your own thoughts and instincts in terms of what the site should look like and how it should behave. This can be difficult. For a professional look, it's usually best to have the advice of a professional designer who's experienced in creating website concepts and who knows how to make colours work effectively with one another;

* The templates or starting setups sometimes provided with the first 3 options listed above are often quite limited and/or inflexible - as soon as you want to do something which is outside the capability of the templates or framework you will run into problems whereby you need some additional technical knowledge to get things how you want them (or what you're trying to achieve may not even be possible at all);

* In many cases, website builders and tools which enable websites to be built easily simply cannot support some of the more difficult or advanced functionality without you knowing what you're doing on a technical level. Option 4 listed above would help you get around this, but in itself this would involve training yourself as a website developer to a fairly high level.

In short, if you are serious about creating a website for your business (as opposed to a hobby or basic personal website) this approach is generally a bad move. There really is a lot to know about building a professional recruitment website and trying to build it yourself is, well, kind of like trying to build your own house: you'll put the foundations in all wrong which will cause problems later, you won't know how to build things so that they're future and intruder proof, you won't be able to put systems in place that tell you when something's wrong and you probably won't be able to do a high quality job (at least not the first time round). Most importantly of all, you'll spend WAY too much time learning how to build a website that would be far better spent working on your business or other areas of recruitment.

Approach 2: Internal DIY

This is similar to the above, but in this case your IT team carry out the website build. This might be an option if you already have an IT team who look after other internal systems or databases.

But the problem is that building a successful website is a very specialised skill in itself. It's a sub-sector of IT and even if your IT team have some experience building websites, they may not have a great deal of experience building recruitment websites specifically.

The main disadvantage of this method is that in the long-run it is likely to cost your business much more than it would to outsource this option to a website development company (preferably one specialising in recruitment websites). A specialist agency would be able to offer you something for a fixed price, within a fixed time frame and they should be able to use knowledge and experience gained from other projects and clients in order to help your website perform better.

Approach 3: 'Out of the Box' recruitment website templates

This is where the recruitment website is basically already created for you, top to bottom. These systems can be very tempting, reasonably cheap and yes, they can be useful in some situations. This type of website often comes with large amounts of functionality at a relatively low cost and provides one complete and fairly quick solution.

Initially, this option sounds really good. It's the natural route you might think of and it's kind of like choosing a new kitchen from a magazine and having someone bring it in and install it for you.

That's all very well. However, there are a whole bunch of problems with this approach and you need to think very carefully about whether you're actually just cutting corners on your website by doing this or whether it's the right and sensible investment.

The disadvantages are:

* These solutions often look very similar to one another which means that it's quite possible your website will look the same as 10, 20, or 30 other recruitment agency websites around the country - possibly some of your competitors;

* These websites are often over-engineered with large amounts of functionality which is available to the candidate and/or clients on your site, but due to the generic and formulaic way in which it's been implemented, it doesn't necessarily get used as often as it might otherwise do i.e. it doesn't really work too well from a business perspective;

* There may be some limitations on what either can or cannot be done with the website either now or in the future from a technical point of view i.e. it may not be entirely flexible in the long run;

Sometimes, this kind of approach to building websites can be a little slap-dash... but more crucially that it completely undermines the whole approach which a business should have towards its website:

The company website is one of, if not THE, most powerful and profitable marketing tool/tools available to any business. Most recruitment companies completely under-use their website as a means of attracting new candidates and clients. Using a template website solution means subscribing to a 'me too' approach for your website which will make it seem generic and standard. All businesses need to try to differentiate themselves from their competitors and a template approach to the company website will make it more difficult to do this.

In short, using template website risks making your company look like a template business. You probably wouldn't be happy thinking of your business as a template business, so it's important not to view your website like that either. Ultimately you might be disappointed with the results you get from a template website in comparison to what your website should be able to do for your business (more because of the overall approach and strategy than because of the actual product itself).

Approach 4: Ground-up development (from scratch)

This (or something close to it) is often offered by website suppliers (both good and bad) who don't have much experience building recruitment websites. They'll agree a specification with you and build you an entire system, from scratch, that should be entirely yours from top to bottom.

Investing in this route will usually mean you end up with a website which doesn't have some of the drawbacks of the template website option mentioned above.

However, there are certain disadvantages:

* It'll be much more expensive (to get a good job done at least);

* It'll usually take longer;

* It'll mean the company are developing lots of un-tested, brand-new functions for you, from scratch: the company will spend 90% of their time on development, but only 10% of their time with you understanding your requirements and getting things just right for you. This means your website will be the one and only guinea pig for the new code and you'll need to fully finance all future developments.

Ultimately, this method is quite inefficient and you're getting someone to reinvent the whole wheel when really, you only need to reinvent the part of it that makes your business different.

Important Notes On This Approach - Beware:

Many web development companies who produce bespoke or customised websites claim they will be building your website completely from scratch and so you would think their service falls within this category. The main reason why this is attractive is because it means that (unlike the next option) you are not tied to any specific company for a set of core code libraries or pieces of your website. However, when the functional components of a website become remotely complicated, it is extremely rare for a website development company to write every line of code for a website from the top layers down through to the database, from scratch, for any particular client. To do this (for anything like the complexity of even a fairly simple recruitment website) would take many hundreds of hours, and probably months of development time. It would be extremely difficult for any website development company to be competitive if they start each website entirely from scratch.

Instead, most companies tend to use certain code libraries or an existing base and they build their websites using that foundation (this is closer to approach 5 listed below). Irrespective of how the particular website development company might word it (within the fine print of their agreements etc), it is generally the case that you are NOT buying the core system from the supplier. Instead, you are buying all of the bespoke work which they do for you as part of the project you agree with them. This will typically include: design work (copyright of which you will own), integration with the core system and any other custom code or logic which they may write for you specifically as part of the project. In addition to the work carried out for you, you may then need to pay a licence fee during the lifetime of your website for the base system upon which your website is built.

You must be careful here: many development companies will assign rights for the entire website to you, unaware that they are not allowed to do this: if they have sold a core system to one client, then they simply cannot sell it to a second client since it is no longer theirs to sell. Alternatively, they may simply not tell you that they in fact own a large piece of your website which you are not entitled to if you ever wish to move your website to a different supplier.

Approach 5: Bespoke website built upon on a Licensed Core System

Having either tried or seen all other approaches first-hand, we believe this is by far the best approach for building recruitment websites currently.

In this approach, you pay for the development of the 'top layer' of your website (everything that's specific for you), and the integration of that top layer with a core system which has already been built, tried and tested. You then buy a reasonably priced annual license to use that core system with your website.

Advantages:

* Your site can look and work exactly how you want (like ground-up development) but you don't have to pay for the expensive or risky task of creating all that code from scratch;
* Your site won't look or work like a template website - it can do anything you want and look exactly how you want;
* Your supplier will be able to spend almost all of their time with you and working on your requirements instead of redeveloping basic functions from scratch;
* There's not much value in the core stuff for you (you only need one copy of it to run your website) so this allows you to have that copy without paying to develop it;
* You will be able to take advantage of existing core functions which are already tried and tested;
* The website will be much less 'buggy' (it'll be more stable and reliable);
* You'll have access to future upgrades and improvements as they happen and you'll only need to pay a fraction of the price for these because the cost would be shared across other clients using the same core functions.

There's just one main disadvantage to this approach: you won't own the entire system from top to bottom which you might do with approach (4) (but only if you've been very careful about the legalities and ownership of all the code).

But ultimately, why do you need to own the entire system? - The licensed core system approach enables you to get a highly functional, yet still unique and fully customised website without having all the code developed for yourself from scratch - It means you're not reinventing the whole wheel, just the part of it that really matters to you and your business.

Summary:

So here are the key points to remember from this article:

1. DIY websites can be cheap but will cost you a lot of time and will rarely give you the results you're looking for;

2. Having your own IT team craft a website for you is an option but outsourcing to a specialist supplier will usually be more cost effective and should in theory provide you with a better website as they will be leveraging experience gained on other similar projects;

3. Template solutions can be tempting because they offer so much for relatively little cost. But be careful to work out whether this is the right investment for your business: are you simply cutting corners by not taking the time to develop a fully-fledged online strategy for your business and thereby missing out on a vast amount of opportunity?;

4. True ground-up (from scratch) development is usually prohibitively expensive and certainly not cost-effective for most businesses. But be extremely careful of agencies offering this kind of service when in fact they may be selling you some code which has already been sold elsewhere as part of a different website. Even if this is not the case, the time they have to spend developing code will leave much less time for them to give you their attention;

5. The licensed core system gives you the best of all worlds as you can have a website developed for your business which is:

* Unique;
* Fully customised from an appearance and functionality point-of-view;
* Aligned specifically to your current business goals and requirements;
* Tailored to your specific candidate and client audience;
* Built on a reliable and well-tested underlying platform which is already in live use;
* Less expensive than true ground-up development;

When you're investigating different options for your website, try to work out which of the approaches listed in this article each option falls into. This should help you make a more informed decision about the type of website you are buying, how much of it you will really own, and the results you can realistically expect to see from it for your business.

An article by Dougles Chan - Recruitment Guru. A Business Coach that specialized on coaching recruitment agencies & staffing agencies. Author of 8 books. 25 years in business coaching in recruitment and staffing agencies. Training recruitment business owners in Singapore, USA, UK, and Australia. He specialized business, sales, marketing, digital marketing, 360 recruitment process, SEO, SEM, and social media recruiting. For 121 recruitment coaching, kindly check here.

Save Money on Recruitment - 7 Top Tips

With the economy recovering, and companies starting to think about growth, it's the perfect time to offer 7 tips you can use to reduce the money you spend if you are hiring.

These tips are not a "one size fits all" approach to recruitment, and I wouldn't recommend attempting all of these together, certainly without help. Hopefully they'll give you some ideas and get you thinking in ways you may not otherwise have.

1. Stop using recruitment agencies.

All recruitment agencies aren't created equal, and you should consider this point (indeed, all of this advice) based on your own situation, but this is about saving money and agencies are by far the most expensive source of candidates.

When you use recruitment agencies, you set the skill, experience and salary levels, write the job spec (and therefore their advert), you sort CV's and you interview. The only bits the agency does are search for candidates and negotiate salaries.

To be fair, sourcing candidates is the most time consuming aspect of the process, but when you consider that it's just one part of that process, the question you should ask is "does this justify the fee?"

When you consider that over 80% of UK Jobseekers found their last role on-line, and the average job board advert costs under 500GBP, compared to the average fee within IT Recruitment of over 9,000GBP, the numbers don't add up.

On-line job boards also simplify the agencies job, which makes it all the more surprising that companies are prepared to pay upwards of ten grand for someone to find CV's!

Other options are to search for candidates yourself. This is the most time consuming option, but also the most cost effective. And with a bit of planning, it's not that tricky. If you've got a job spec you can create an advert and with a simple spreadsheet set up in advance, filtering CV's doesn't have to be difficult. Of course, this doesn't have to mean you personally! Anyone from HR or admin can find good CV's if they know what to look for.

There are on-line only recruitment companies of which you can find plenty on the internet. For a low fixed fee, they will advertise on several job boards and search on-line CV databases. The upshot, in theory, is that you receive CV's of several candidates that can fulfil your role. The main drawback is at the price they charge, you shouldn't expect too much advice or support, and whatever they say, the blanket approach doesn't suit all roles. It's cheap, and we are talking about saving money, but its called budget recruitment for a reason.

The most under-used method is to recruit internally, and I'm including referrals from internal staff here. Recruiting from your employee base is free, and you can't get much cheaper than that. Regarding referrals, this is something that you should actively encourage, and even reward your staff for. A lot of companies offer this, but don't utilise it, and they're missing a trick. This be your employee's friends, but you should encourage them to approach their wider network of contacts, via sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn or even forums related to their role. You can offer your staff an introduction fee and it's still considerably cheaper than using an agency.

2. Stop using recruitment agencies.

Now, I'm cheating a bit with the same heading twice, but this is a completely different reason for the same action; that agencies go out of their way to push your costs up.

One of the benefits of agencies I'm often quoted is that you instruct several agencies to resource your role, but you only pay the one that finds your person. This is a worthy benefit, but is negated by the fact that you'll pay that agency significantly over the odds. This is accentuated by the fact that agencies are paid on the outcome of their efforts rather than the service they deliver. This means that they will do whatever they can to make a placement, and at the highest salary level (and therefore fee) possible.

You may have experienced a situation where you've asked a candidate in interview how much money they want and they reply that all negotiations have to go through their agent. This is what agencies tell them to say so the agency can negotiate the highest salary they can get. I find it strange that an agency that YOU are paying (so are working for YOU) will go out of their way to make YOU pay more. I don't know about you, but that doesn't strike me as being in your best interests!

Of course, you can employ agencies to source candidates, and insist that all salary negotiations are carried out by your company. The agency won't like this and will give you reasons why it wouldn't work ("We know the candidate better"; "We know how low they'll go"; "We're experts in negotiating salaries and will get you a better outcome"; and many more) but all they're trying to do is make you pay a higher salary and therefore a higher fee. These may be valid points, but none of them are things you can't discuss with a candidate - especially one you're looking to hire. The candidate may even be more open with you because they won't feel you're trying to get leads from them; another agency tactic I won't go into here.

The important point to remember is that agencies only get paid when they place someone with you, and the more money that candidate gets paid, the higher their fee, so bear that in mind when you are negotiating with agencies.

3. Prioritise your search criteria.

It's very easy when writing a job spec, especially when you've always used agencies, to feel as though you should aim for the perfect person. It's as if the "ideal candidate" will justify the massive fees! This lack of priority leads to large numbers of unsuitable CV's, lots of unproductive interviews and a long and demoralising recruitment campaign. It may also mean you start looking at more expensive candidates, purely because they have all the skills you're looking for.

If you want to save money and a lot of time when recruiting, then you must prioritise the skills you require.

This is very easy; all it requires is to decide what the most important aspect you require is; the second most; third and so on. Then ensure you let your head rule your heart when you are looking at CV's and interviewing candidates. This, when done correctly, will save you a lot of money and it must be done in conjunction with...

4. Make compromises.

You've prioritised your search criteria, and know exactly what you're looking for in your "ideal" candidate, as well as your priority skills, now you need to set your tolerance levels; which skills you're prepared to compromise on and by how much.

When you are reviewing CV's, interviewing candidates and selecting the one(s) you want to hire, you need to ensure you stick with the criteria you set out at the beginning of the process.

If you're prepared to compromise on some of the secondary skills, the salary level will be reduced. Obviously, you may not get your perfect candidate, but you'll certainly get someone who can do the job, probably to a more than acceptable level, and you should see a substantial cost saving.

5. Turn to training.

This is present in other forms within most organisations, maybe succession or workforce planning, or indeed personal or career development, and it can be used effectively when you're actively looking to hire. This is an area that may take more planning but can save you considerable amounts of money in the long term.

Put in its simplest form, the best way to save money on recruitment is not to recruit at all.

You may be surprised how much cheaper it is to train someone to a good level in a specific skill than to hire someone who already has that skill and has used it in a relevant project. This can be incorporated into your recruitment planning in more ways than one.

Firstly, you can promote from within and train that employee to do the job you were going to recruit for. This may mean you need to recruit someone to replace that employee, and if this can't be done internally, you may need to look externally, but it's a lower level role, so will be cheaper.

Secondly, you could recruit someone with just some, or none, of the specific skills that you're looking for and train them up. There is a very strong argument that it's better to recruit someone who fits your team or company culture and train them in the skills they need, rather than recruit someone who is skilled up but doesn't fit in. Recruiting someone with less skills and/or experience than you need is obviously going to reduce their salary.

There is the argument that you'll train people up and they'll leave for a higher salary, but this is a risk that can be reduced through effective management and retention or workforce planning.

6. Contract recruitment vs. permanent recruitment.

This is a sensitive subject, but I believe it's a great way to manage your budget - if done properly. The way to manage this is to be completely realistic about your project length, and the specific role that each individual is going to play within each project - from the outset.

The two most common situations I see regarding this is when a contractor is hired for a specific part of a specific project, which they complete, then start working on the next stage, or another project, because "they can help" or "they have skills that will enhance the project's outcomes", but this is where a six month contract turns into two years, and that's when you spend a fortune. What happens is the contractor gets embedded into the project or company and the management team forget that the project can continue very well without that individual. It can be a difficult situation to manage, and can happen easily if a project is over-running, but careful use of contractors is essential.

The second is when a project needs an injection of skills to get it to the next stage, or for a planned stage, and a permanent person is hired. This is normally because contractors are seen as a huge expense that should be avoided at all costs, and this mindset can have serious consequences on your budget, and timescales. It's difficult to give examples, because every situation is different, but it is certainly worth considering a contractor when you have a set piece of work to carry out. It may appear to be an expensive way to get work done, but in terms of an annual budget, especially when you include tax, NI, pension, holiday/sick pay and other benefits then using a contractor will frequently save you money - and time in the actual recruitment process.

7. Shorten your recruitment process.

This final point relates to indirect costs - the time it takes you and others within your organisation to carry out recruitment tasks. Time spend not doing your job is a substantial cost, if followed through, and taking less time to hire is one way to ensure that individuals can get on with their jobs rather than spending time interviewing, or on other recruitment tasks. There are several ways that this can be done...

Delegation is the first way to shorten the process, at least for the more senior people involved. The easiest way is getting subordinates to filter CV's. If you receive 30 CV's for one job, around 29 of them will be rejected. Surely there are certain criteria that someone less senior than you can look for that may eliminate the first 10, or even 20 of those, meaning that you only need to look at 10, rather than 30 CV's.

The same goes for interviews. Most people that you interview will be unsuitable for the job because of something fairly obvious, usually established quite quickly. Does the most senior person on the team therefore need to be involved in the first interview, or even the first part of the first interview? If you're involved in 5 interviews rather than 10, how much time will you save?

Another way to save time stems from points 3 and 4 above. If you set skills you need, and others you can compromise on, it's a lot harder to get dragged into discussions over candidates with skills away from your key criteria. I've seen it numerous times when a candidate with very few of the key skills still attracts interest because they have another skill you think may help the project. The key is to remember what you are recruiting for now, and not get distracted. That person may be suitable at a later date, and you can discuss that with them, but you should also continue your search for the person you need now, and not let that get delayed. It's another tricky one to manage, but discipline in setting and adhering to criteria will really benefit you here.

Finally, - and depending on your circumstances will have varying impact - is the approval process. Once a budget has been agreed for recruiting a new person, it has been agreed! Why then, once you have found the person you want within the agreed budget, does that person need to be interviewed several times, by people at various levels, and have their application/hire signed off again? This "approval" process can take a long time and not only delays the hire of a person who could already be working, but it also takes time out of the day of several senior people within the company. You also risk losing your candidate altogether and having to start over.

All of points 3 - 7 can be incorporated into your recruitment plan whether you decide to use agencies or not. Any saving that you make from these points will be increased if you do use agencies, because if you pay lower salaries, you will also pay lower agency fees. However, if you decide not to use agencies, you'll already have saved yourself several thousand pounds, and combining the other points will create additional savings.

An article by Dougles Chan - Recruitment Guru. A Business Coach that specialized on coaching recruitment agencies & staffing agencies. Author of 8 books. 25 years in business coaching in recruitment and staffing agencies. Training recruitment business owners in Singapore, USA, UK, and Australia. He specialized business, sales, marketing, digital marketing, 360 recruitment process, SEO, SEM, and social media recruiting. For 121 recruitment coaching, kindly check here.