Our partners New Millennia suggest you tackle your recruitment startup with realistic perceptions of the work that goes into a successful startup to make the journey easier in the long run. Here they share some tips to set you on the right track.
Recruitment Startup Experience: Expectations vs Reality
Your recruitment startup will take you on a journey, of which you don’t really know the destination or the route. You’ll plan and you’ll budget and you’ll plan some more with your aims and timeline in mind, however, the route that you end up taking may be longer, shorter, harder, or just completely different to how you ever imagined it. The top and the bottom of this is that you need to be flexible and incredibly realistic if you’re going to reach your end goal.
Far from deterring you from diving into your startup dream, but rather in the interest of providing a helpful reality check before you embark, here are a few expectations vs reality scenarios for you to get your head around so that you can keep going and build that successful recruitment startup!
Making Money
Expectation
There’s plenty of money in recruitment, so you’re bound to be bringing in the big bucks pretty soon, right?
Reality
Well, not quite. This is a business venture and while there is money to be made in recruitment, don’t plan on getting your hands on it straight away; it takes a while to get any business on its feet, so while you may have given yourself a small window for loss, over plan for this and extend that window. If it comes sooner then great, but avoid disappointment and be over cautious with the timescale for the expectation of bringing in a profit.
Flexibility & Control
Expectation
Setting up your own recruitment startup means you’re in control now and you get to make all of the decisions, time is your own and you’re not accountable to anyone but you!
Reality
Setting up your own recruitment agency does give you more control but you are still working to fulfil your client’s needs, working to their timescales and you are accountable to anyone you bring on to your team. They need organisation and at least a little structure to be able to fulfil their role effectively, and clients need to be satisfied, so just remember that and you won’t be disappointed by the level of flexibility and control your business venture allows you.
Hard Work
Expectation
Growing a business takes hard work, there are no illusions around this; however, approaching your recruitment startup expecting to see quick results from your hard work is an attitude that might need a couple of reality checks along the way.
Reality
The hard work needed to push your business through to success is likely to demand much more of you than you expected it could or would. Getting caught up in or dragged down by the more mundane tasks that don’t appear to be actively growing your business but that are necessary for your business to grow can give you cause to think, is all of this hard work ever going to pay off? Have a mantra that you can return to get you through this, remember your aims, why you’re doing this and where you want to be in one or five year’s time!
New Businesses Fail
Expectation
Before you start or while you’re experiencing a particularly challenging time in your startup you might ask yourself ‘is it worth the hard work because don’t most startup businesses fail?’
Reality
The reality is that while some new businesses do fail, so do some mature business and, let’s be honest, you won’t know how your business will mature unless you try. You’ll hear and read statistics like ‘only 50.1% of companies established in 2013 survived for 3 years’, however, look at the details of these stats before you get disheartened, that’s still over half, and this particular statistic was looking only at London based companies, an area highly populated with new business startups, so the rate of competition and therefore failure will be higher. Keep perspective and don’t get easily disheartened!
Rejection Rate
Expectation
Build the business, do the marketing and the clients will come. Sure, you might not expect all leads to secure business but most of them will if you approach them right.
Reality
Receiving more rejection than you thought. While this can be disheartening, keep the mentality of powering through, working hard and staying true to your business. Just know to expect more rejection than acceptance and grow a thick skin, brush off the rejection and keep growing with your values and drive in tact!
Backoffice Management
Expectation
You’ll be able to run the back office yourself for a while, using the small startup team you have until you grow enough to hire a bigger team.
Reality
Payroll management and processing, invoicing software and workforce management can become quite a task. Enlisting the assistance of a dedicated team to outsource your back office management might really help you in those initial stages, taking on the time-consuming tasks and freeing you and your team up to concentrate on what matters, your clients!
