The most common recruitment startup myths

We have prepared this resource to help future founders overcome some uncertainties they might have.

Although investors exist who will plough hundreds of thousands of pounds into new recruitment ventures, lots of start-ups launch with humbler origins and significantly less cash in the bank.

For most founders, start-up capital consists of approximately 6 months’ living expenses safely stashed away – enough to keep the lights on until the first few deals begin to land.

Those who don’t have the cash saved can access investment on very competitive terms, usually retaining 80-90%+ of their equity, or use loan options to repay what they need to borrow to get going.

Whatever a potential founder’s scenario may be, it’s rarely inability to finance the launch which will hold things back – even with rent, mortgages and other bills to pay.

In many cases, would-be business owners wait years in employment in the mistaken belief that they aren’t financially ‘ready’ to start building their own company, when in reality they have options to begin creating a valuable asset for themselves and transforming their earning potential much more easily than they realise.

Restrictive covenants and non-compete agreements in the recruitment industry vary tremendously in scope and quality, but in most cases they are very unlikely to entirely prevent a recruiter from starting their own business.

There is often a gap between what is written in a contract and what is legally enforceable in a court of law – so what you see is not necessarily what you get.

Often this ‘gap’ creates opportunity for recruiters to exploit poorly-worded covenants and get going.

Even with the most tightly-constructed restrictions, consultants are likely to be prevented from immediately re-engaging their recent client and candidate base for anything from 3 to 12 months – but there will usually be no total block on their ability to go solo.

When restrictions are watertight, founders need to look at the most effective ways of preparing their business to prospect and engage a new customer segment as quickly as possible until the covenants expire.

For many founders, taking some form of investment is essential in order to make their ventures possible.

Whether it’s some extra help paying the bills in the form of a salary or additional capital to accelerate growth through early hiring, there are plenty of people who start recruitment companies assisted by someone else’s cash.

This doesn’t mean, however, that all investors can be lumped together as ‘offering the same thing’ – neither in terms of the rates and conditions on which they invest, nor the additional value they may add on top of their financial contribution.

In fact, the variation can be staggering at times, with some investors requesting up to four or five times as much equity for the same cash investment as others.

Founders who fail to explore their options fully and ‘shop around’ for the best deal can literally cut themselves off from hundreds of thousands of pounds of future reward – based purely on the terms on which they accept the initial cash boost to get their company started.

Investor partnerships aren’t just about initial equity percentages either – they should also allow for future scenarios as the business grows and evolves.

Often founders are encouraged by investors to build out their ‘wishlists’ for the tools and resources they’d like to have when starting up, as this inflates the initial cash injection required and therefore allows the investor to demand a bigger piece of the pie.

A more collaborative approach is to examine whether the business really needs everything that is scheduled to be funded by start-up capital, or whether it can purchase or fund some of it organically through profit as it begins to generate income.

And, while every investment arrangement should result in a win-win deal, there are certainly routes and approaches which keep the founder’s long-term interests firmly in mind – and others which are tilted heavily in the investors’ favour.

One of the biggest areas of concern for most first-time business owners is financial management – usually the area of operations they’ve had the least exposure to (if any at all), and a potential minefield if not handled correctly.

For many, reassurance comes from knowing that accountants can be engaged to ‘deal with’ core company financial matters for very competitive rates – £1,000 per year or less for small businesses.

But there can be confusion around what these types of basic accounting packages actually provide, and – critically – how much support and guidance will be available to founders during the running of their companies on a day-by-day basis.

In practice, financial decision-making is an ongoing part of operating a company, not something which can be swept aside and processed once per year.

It includes:

And much, much more…

Though basic accounting packages can seem attractive, they usually involve little more than processing and filing legally-required data – often providing little or no input to the vital role that effective financial management plays in shaping and enabling growth.

Having access to expert financial resources saves enormous time on self-education, ringing around networks and paying external consultants.

When it comes to growth, many new agency owners fall into the trap of building their cash reserves without much thought as to who or how they will hire to grow their business.

With a basic notion that ‘more heads = growth’, they approach hiring without a long-term business strategy in mind, feeling confident that more capacity must be a good thing – and that consequently it doesn’t matter much who is hired first, as long as they’re productive.

Many have no clear basis for deciding whether to opt for a full or split desk model, nor do they link the design of compensation plans with the strategic objectives of the business.

They hire people based on whether or not they can find a way to turn them into a profitable ‘head’ or ‘desk’, without thinking much beyond the immediate 12 months ahead…

Consequently, their companies grow haphazardly.

Along the way, they structure teams, incentives, market segmentation and management tiers not around an effective and cohesive roadmap, but around whoever they happen to bring into their organisation.

And, while this approach can work, it’s a very risky game to play.

Agencies are built on people, and behind almost all successful founders are a handful of key hires that were brought into their companies at the right time and who have dramatically helped shape and accelerate business growth.

Conversely, hiring the wrong people in the wrong order can create major obstacles to scaling a business, forcing companies to work around gaps in skill sets and letting the ‘tail wag the dog’ regarding how teams grow and function.

Some recruiters considering starting up are reluctant to own anything less than 100% of their equity and 100% of their business revenue, working on the assumption that anything other than 100 must mean ‘less for them’ overall.

In reality, this all depends on the contribution that other business partners make to the total revenue, profit or value of the company.

If those sharing equity or income make no positive contribution to the founder’s ability to create value, it’s true that the founder is at a disadvantage by giving anything away.

But you don’t have to look far in business to find examples of people doing phenomenally well without ‘owning everything’:

The huge majority of successful business owners leverage financial, operational and strategic input from others to focus their own time on maximising their overall return.

Sharing a percentage of success (X%) with highly incentivised parties pays off significantly as long as those parties add value and generate proportionally higher returns (>X%).

With the right partners, it’s a straightforward calculation to make.

The dream of selling a recruitment business and retiring as a multi-millionaire is a major lure for new founders getting ready to create their own firms.

It’s the ultimate step up in personal wealth creation – to go from earning a salary and a commission as part of someone else’s company, to owning and running an organisation that could be worth a life-changing sum of money.

And the dream is real – every year, successful founders around the world cash out of recruitment and staffing companies that they’ve built with their own sweat and graft, pocketing rewards that elevate them to new levels of financial security and altering the course of their lives and those of their families.

But for every recruitment business that sells, there are thousands that never do.