Good that you want to start a recruitment consultancy.
A few tips...
1. Corporate Branding - Build your consultancy as a strong, vibrant, result-oriented brand. While it is easy to do offer your consulting services as a one-man professional service, Corporates especially the big companies prefer to do business with a Private Ltd company. So get a Chartered Accountant to get your consultancy registered with the ROC as a Private Limited company though there are some recurring annual formalities to fulfill. It's worth the pain as it you get to be taken seriously by HR managers of big companies.
2. Identify & highlight your USP - Unique Selling Proposition. Be clear as to what are your differentiators in a crowded & competitive recruitment market.
3. Great ideas need wings for a perfect touchdown. Execution excellence is critical for success.
4. Marketing your company effectively is the key to success.
5. A well-designed website for your consultancy. It acts as your online marketing agent 24/7.
6. List your consultancy details along with website URL in all online resources - free classifieds & business directories so much so on googling your company name, the search page should come up with your online resources quoting your company.
7. Write some articles/tips frequently in HR/job blogs listing your company & website and try writing in magazines/newspapers as well. This is again for brand building.
8. Remember, when people come to know you are into Recruitment business they'll ask you to get job for them, friends, etc. Be clear that you work for employers (companies) and not for individuals. To explain further, if you get say 500 resumes in the first month, think what's the use of them without clients. So focus on getting clients & then you can think of getting resumes.
9. Build great networks among professionals, Use networking sites (orkut, linkedin, facebook, etc) for scanning quality profiles & contacting them.
10. Top IT companies will not touch a new recruitment consultancy with a barge pole. So you'll have to work with companies in the SMB segment.
11. Offer recruitment services for both IT & non-IT segments. With the economic downturn, you cannot afford to shut your doors. We are here for money & we should be ready to go where money is.
12. Be prepared, clients will make you dance to their tunes. When they call you they'll tell the recruitment is urgent as if the sky will fall on them. Once you pass up the CVs they'll take their sweet time to schedule interviews or will not tell you what they intend to do next. They'll come up all sorts of excuses...boss is traveling, HR manager is sick, we're recruiting some other postion now, my outlook is not working, etc
13. It's better to do business with SMB segment companies since they'll by and large, be prompt in payments. The biggies will get your service and drag on payments or worse tell you that they already have the CVs you forwarded in their database. Be wary to work with top companies. Many a time reputed companies indulge in sharp practices.
14. Many non-IT companies & small IT companies are unaware of market scenario. They want a person with Narayana Murthy's caliber but will be prepared to pay, say, Rs.7000/- pm. Tell them clearly "If you pay peanuts, you'll get monkeys". You'll have to educate them on the market competitiveness and tell clearly the candidate will not dance to their whims and fancies. Many a time, the candidate will lose interest / find better jobs merely because the company treated them badly during the interview (like making them wait for hours, etc).
15. Finally, bear in mind, despite the economic slowdown, still it's a employee's market out there & they have their own choices before they sign up to your client. Until the candidate joins your client & sticks on for 3 months without making any trouble, you're not sure of your cheque!
I'm afraid I'm not scaring you but thought this gives an idea as to what to expect before you take the plunge.
Other things:
1. Job Portal subscripttion (naukri, monster are best bets though costly and others aren't really worth the money eventhough they could come cheap) - Annual Subscripttion could cost about Rs.1.5 lacs. I'd suggest you can go for quarterly subscripttion for about Rs.35k (you get two login IDs) and then renew towards expiry.
2. Office space for interviewing candidates. BPO & customer-facing jobs require candidates to be vetted before passing up for client interview. Although for IT, you don't need to do any face-to-face interview (telephonic interview would suffice).
Hope this helps. All the best!
Feel free to give me your feedback!
Regards,
Ranjan Kumar
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