The recruiting industry has been one of the industries with the most developments in recent years. When covid hit, hiring was hit hardest. When we recovered, hiring jumped up. Current economic turbulence makes things even more exciting.

But one thing is for sure. Companies need talent. Without the right people, no business.

An exciting industry for sure. And especially if you’re starting your own recruiting business.

This guide will walk you through all the necessary steps for you to set up your recruiting agency.

1. Get registered
2. Choose your niche
3. Build your brand
4. Decide on a business model
5. Find customers
6. Go recruit!

1. Get registered

In most countries you need to be a registered business to legally do business with customers.

Every country has its own legal structures, options for starting a business and rules so you have to figure out what those are within your country.

Not the most exciting part of setting up a business, but for you to receive money from customers and to operate legally you need to have your business registered.

Take into account that when you want to do business internationally (cross-border) you might need a different legal set up than when you do business only locally.

Also financially there are a lot of things to consider, like tax.

Best is to involve an accountant or financial advisor with the experience needed for your specific set up. If you don’t have that money to spend yet, start with a simple structure. You usually can change your legal entity later, although it might require some work.

Here are the basic steps to go through to get registered:

Step 1. Research possible legal structures

Find out which entity you can set up within the country where you want to register your agency. Is it going to be your home country? Then you might already be familiar with some of the rules and options for registering your business entity. 

Google the regulations in your region, which governmental organizations processes business registration and seek advice from people who you know who set up a business before in your region.

Step 2. Get registered

File your request to register your business. Depending on the country’s efficiency of setting businesses this can take anywhere between a couple days to a couple of months.

This doesn’t mean you cannot already start on building your business. There is a lot of work you can already do without being registered (building a website, setting up your recruitment process, starting networking etc.).

Step 3. Keep your documents safe!

Keep all the legal documentation that you build up somewhere in a safe and organized place. Bad administration can cost a lot of money and cause problems in the future. Take your time to develop a disciplined way of working and keep your administrative hygiene in order. Use software that can manage your finances like Freshbooks and file storage like Google Drive.

2. Choose your niche

A niche is a particular part of the industry that you focus on. An example of a niche of a recruitment business could be ‘Permanent tech talent for startups’.

It’s important to pick a niche because when you focus on a particular part of the market it’s a lot easier to build up knowledge and network quickly instead of going after all kinds of different recruitment projects.

You don’t have to know exactly what you want to focus on initially because developing your specialism and brand around a niche is an iterative process and takes time. Also, you can always expand your services across market segments later.

It does help however to quickly gain experience and a name in a segment where customers don’t have that focus on a particular candidate market. This will be part of your added value as a recruitment agency.

You can look at niches from a couple different angles:

• Roles
• Industries
• Process
• Job type

Roles

Are you going to focus on finding tech talent only or is it financial professionals you’re going to help customers find? The candidate market you focus on can bring a lot of value to the customer since you will have built up knowledge of how to source these candidates and also a network of candidates within that niche.

Industries

Are you going to focus on the corporate market or on startups? A startup company will have fundamentally different requirements to talent than corporations. So you might want to establish your recruitment agency as one that can help with the specific needs of certain growth stages of a company. Also the industry angle can be a relevant one to choose your niche in, is it going to be healthcare organizations, financial institutions, governments or software companies you’re going to help?

Process

Are you going to focus on the sourcing part of recruitment or are you going to be a full-cycle recruitment agency? Based on the companies you like to help you probably also have a certain focus in terms of process. Bigger companies might need your help specifically for the sourcing part of recruitment (finding talent and reaching out) and smaller companies might be looking for more of a full-cycle approach since they don’t have the resources and experience to do recruitment themselves.

Job type

Are you going to focus on permanent or contract jobs? Recruiting for contract roles fulfills a different need than permanent roles and requires a different expertise and is more reliant on the network that you will build up yourself. Whereas recruitment for permanent positions is much more focussed on long term commitment and the right fit with company culture.

3. Build your brand

You’re not the only recruitment agency. Competition in the recruitment industry is very real and you have to differentiate yourself from others to win deals. The good news is that most recruitment agencies don’t invest a lot in building a brand. 

The biggest part of agencies, especially the smaller ones, have unfinished and very basic websites, monstrous logos and zero content.

This is an opportunity for you to stand out with a beautiful brand that clearly communicates your focus (niche) and possibly also educates potential customers on where to find good recruitment services (that’s you!).

Website

A great website lets you stand out and get the attention from a customer. It also is the gateway for information about your recruitment services for potential customers. Your website should make clear what services you offer, which niche your serving and what your approach is.

Your website can also be the place where you create and share content like videos and blogs. If you do this right potential customers are even able to find you in search engines like Google so you can create a steady stream of organic traffic and eventually leads for your business.

Here’s some inspiration from great recruitment agency websites:

• maydayrecruitment.com
• findingclarity.ca
• cimastaffing.com
• therecruitmentcrowd.com

Your options for building a website:

1. Hire a website developer: through for example Fiverr, UpWork, or someone in your own network
2. Build it yourself: with website builders like Squarespace, Web.com or Wix.

Content

Content can be a true growth engine for your recruitment business. Many potential customers start their search for recruitment agency services online. If you have good content, you might be one of the agencies ending on top of their search results and probably the one they click on.

Next to appearing in search results, content also helps you to establish your recruitment brand in other ways. You can share content on social media, in events and in newsletters. 

The more interesting content you create, the more engaged potential customers will find you and contact you to learn more. 

Content can be anything like blogs, how to guides, videos, email newsletters and even full courses on recruiting.

Why give your knowledge away for free? Because in the end you’ll gain customers by creating content because website visitors end up in leads and leads will end up in paying customers.

Here are some examples of strong blog pages of recruitment agencies:

• isltalent.com/insights
• gregsavage.com.au/the-savage-truth/
• contractrecruiter.com/cr-blog/

To find out what the most interesting topics are to create your own content about, you can use a SEO tool like Mangools to do your keyword research.

Social

When you have interesting ideas and content to share with the world, share it! Get active on social media like LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, wherever your potential customers and potential candidates are active.

Create a company account on social media so people can find your brand and start following your agency for updates.

But also engage with posts and updates from your potential customers so they will see that care about their companies and their professional goals.