Do you have what it takes to become a recruitment entrepreneur?
A recruitment entrepreneur can come in any shape and size. You don’t need to be a go-getting extrovert to run a successful business and you don’t need to be a financial genius to make money. These are some key traits that make good entrepreneurs and remember you can learn! If you want to make a success of your recruitment business you should bear in mind the importance of these characteristics.
Determination and resilience
Some people do seem to be born with dogged determination in everything they do but for most of us, it is a learned trait that comes with experience. Being an entrepreneur is not all plain sailing. You will have setbacks, disappointments, and times when you want to through in the towel but successful entrepreneurs come back. Take heart from the greatest people in history who all have a story to tell about being on the cusp of giving up.
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. – Thomas A. Edison
What’s important is that you are aware of how tricky it’s going to get and you have a support network and strategies to help you keep going. Find champions in your family and your friends. Unfortunately, many of us do have people who bring us down, through concern or through malice. When you need support, ensure you are talking to positive people who will reassure you, will be constructive, and will make you start work the next morning with a new-found determination to succeed.
Know your strengths and limitations
We all have strengths and weaknesses and when you start your own business it’s easy to get bogged down in all the work you’re not terribly good at and neglect your strengths. If you were hiring you wouldn’t employ a salesperson to do the legal work, or a courier to do the accounts. When you start out you have to learn lots of different skills and that’s running a business. However, you mustn’t slip into the false economy of doing everything yourself, badly. Yes, accountants are expensive, and lawyers even more so but you could spend so much of your own time that it becomes cost-effective. Bad accounts and dodgy documents could ruin your business in the long run. Be realistic about your limitations and make sure you spend most of your time playing to your strengths. Similarly, when making your first hires it’s easy to replicate your own talents when who you need is someone with different skills, different strengths, and a different perspective.
Keep learning and keep improving
In the first couple of years of business you will be learning all the time but maybe not how to be a better recruiter, just learning how business rates work or accounting software. Then you realise you are making money and the business is ticking over, and you relax. Sure relax for a bit but this is where many entrepreneurs fail. All that hard work has paid off, you have your clients and look forward to wealthy retirement, forgetting that a load of future recruitment entrepreneurs are just a year or two behind. You need to have a passion for recruitment and keep striving to be the best damn recruiter out there! As a recruitment entrepreneur, you need to be on top of employment legislation, changes in taxes, best working practices, software innovations, and industry trends. Membership of the REC and APSCO can help keep you and your business up to date and conducting a regular competitor analysis is vital to staying ahead too.