Like any other business, starting a recruiting business takes time, knowledge and capital. Recruiting can be a very lucrative business. Contingency recruiting is the most common recruiting business structure. Contingency recruiting is where your firm earns a fee only after a placement is made. Companies do not pay fees to interview your candidates. They only pay fees if they hire one of your candidates. Recruiting takes a great deal of time to learn and build. It takes the average recruiter six months before they see any money from their activity.

Things You Will Need

  • Computer / Laptop

  • Smart Phone

  • Home Office

  • Office Supplies

  • Printer

  • Scanner

Step One - Business Software

Choose your recruiting software package. The software is the single most important tool that you will utilize besides your brain. Choose a software package that is online based. This gives you access from any computer and remotely from a smart phone or notebook computer. Choose a software package that offers resume parsing, advanced resume and job order matching tools as well as a package that will sync with outlook email. There are several really good options out there like Big Biller, Sendouts Pro and Bullhorn. These software packages are available online and offer the features listed above. Links to these web sites are listed below.

Your website will be a very important tool in recruiting. Design the website with interactive portals for entering applicant data and job order data. Clients and candidates alike can provide you with the necessary information to move forward with them on a search. Attach an online application for applicants, credit application for prospective clients and a downloadable brochure for everyone. Make sure that your website has value-added features such as area salary data and averages as well as a page for interview techniques and advice. This makes you website stand out and adds value to the end user. There are several good companies that you can use to design your website. Homestead, Intuit, GoDaddy and Register.com are all very good choices. Be sure to list your website will the primary search engines Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) and Google (www.google.com).

Build your network. Recruiting is all about networking and contacts. List your business on Twitter (www.twitter.com), LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) and Facebook (www.facebook.com). This will give your business instant exposure to lot of potential clients and candidates. Begin communicating with the other members of these social networking sites. List job openings and candidates that you are searching for. Add important business decision makers as contacts within these social networking sites. Attend as many job fairs and recruiting events as possible. This gets your name out there to both potential clients and candidates. Job fairs allow you to connect with clients and in some cases take on job orders.

Sign your agency up with multiple split board and cooperative placement sites. These sites allow you to post your job orders and most placeable candidates. This allows other recruiters to assist in filling your job orders and placing you great candidates. These are call split-fee boards. This creates a team environment while you stay autonomous and independent. Recruiting along is a difficult business. This step will increase your chances of competing successfully against the larger firms. Some split fee sites include Rocket Recruiting (www.rocketrecruting.com), The Recruiters Café (www.recruiterscafe.com) and The Top Echelon Network (www.topechelonnetwork.com).

Establish a relationship with Indeed.com. This site allows you to post your job order adds for free. Unlike CareerBuilder and Monster that charge up to $500 per job add, Indeed will do it nightly for free (www.indeed.com). This will improve your exposure. Email marketing generally comes as add-on to your website and business email account. Email your potential clients and tell them what sets your business apart from all of the rest. These techniques do not cost you any money and allow you to gain good exposure on a light budget.