How to Scale Your Recruiting Agency

The only real way to turn your self employment into a business is by scaling, and there are multiple ways to do this with your recruiting agency.

When I say scale, I particularly am referring to two main models
1. Scaling by hiring
2. Scaling by leveling up in niche

Now let’s cover what both of these models look like exactly.

SCALING BY HIRING:

What does that look like? Well, first things first, you’re going to need consistent funding, to pay your newly hired employees. Recruiters and business development people will need either salaries or salaries and commission structures etc. You’ll need money for this payroll. The other way you can do this is by just adding 1099 people to your operation where they are 100% commission and you don’t need to worry about paying them unless they bring business into the operation. Nonetheless, whether you’re creating salaried employees or 1099 hunters, someone will be taking a “cut” of the profits..

Keep in mind, you will be giving away more control of the business itself to your employees that you’ve hired, which don’t get me wrong can be a very good thing because this allows you more breathing room for them to essentially run things you were running previously and you to sit back and manage….and manage you will….

When hiring employees you can’t just sit back and let it run on autopilot like it’s some kind of artificial intelligence you’ve implemented. Keep in mind people are people and they must be managed. Left unsupervised, people can do nothing and collect a salary. So be aware you’ll need to implement metrics that will keep people on track and accountable to what their duties are, so your job will shift from not doing the work, but supervising others doing the work (almost the same, slightly different). Keep in mind ALSO, that if you decide to hire someone brand new to recruiting you are 100% responsible for training that person from top to bottom and their success relies entirely on your training. This can be an arduous task and you must be ready for that effort.

1. I’m personally a huge control freak and a firm believer in “if you want something done right, you do it yourself”. That’s just me, so I’m overall averse to hiring employees in general, just because I started my agency running all aspects of it and have continued to do so and I’m also a greedy control freak.

2. Managing people isn’t my strong suit and I really don’t want to worry about if employees aren’t meeting their metrics and putting in the work. If I did add people to help my operation out I would do it on a 1099 / 100% commission basis where they only make money when they make a win.

3. I think many people underestimate how people think. I think that you really need to understand that you are the only person that truly cares about your business. You made this recruiting agency. It is YOUR baby. The people you hire on, don’t really buy in to that, they don’t really care about it in the way that you do. Just FYI.

Now…on to the second scaling model, which is remaining solo, nimble, lone wolf, (such as I am right now), but strictly leveling up into higher tier niches that pay more in fees. This involves moving your approach to those clients that are in areas such as technology, finance etc, where you are chasing $20,000 fees rather than a boat load of tinier fees in general labor etc. Let’s talk about what this model looks like big picture.

First off, it’s important to note that you already have all of your procedures and structures in place in place as far as business development, sourcing and recruiting, you’re just going to be leveling up, this is basically going to be a pivot in your business to make more money by focusing on higher paying clients in higher paying niches.

Now what niches these are? Doesn’t really matter, I’m a firm believer that having been in this business, and have worked on all sorts of roles, from technology down to truck drivers.

The key here is really to identify no more than 1-2 niches, that can bring you higher fees, where you can charge 20% on 150K salaries, thus making $25,000 fees rather than a boat load of $3,000 fees.

An obvious caveat with this pivot, this will be more competitive and this will require you to level up your business development skills, targeting, messaging etc!

An awesome way to make this shift is by working splits with a partner!

I’ve worked with partner in technology, about a year ago for a while and it was great placing some tech roles making some big fees, learning a ton in a really short period of time, but my agency with logistics/transportation just moved a lot quicker so my focus shifted on that.

If it isn’t obvious, scaling with this model is perfect because you retain your lone wolf structure, you just level up, get into higher paying niches, make more money, don’t have to take on employees and deal with management hassles etc and I’m just a big fan of that being the greedy control freak that I am.