The Personality Traits You Need To Start Your Own Recruitment Agency

For a lot of people who start a career in recruitment they’ll look up to their directors at least once and say to themselves, “I should be doing that” or “I could do that” or “why aren’t I in the same position?”. And of course why wouldn't we think that? Each consultant is a mini recruitment agency in themselves. We sit there and we pitch brand new clients, we input their details into our CRM, we eventually get personally invited for a face to face role briefing, we write the job advert ourselves, we post the job advert, we sort through the ad response and we source relevant candidates, we submit those candidates, manage the process and close that deal and keep in touch until one day after they pass their probation period. 

I know I sat there plenty of times at the recruitment agency I worked at before I set up my own recruitment firm. My director would come in a couple of hours after me, often leave a couple of hours before I did, he never brought in any good jobs and might make a few placements through the course of the year and that was it. 

Of course running your own recruitment business isn’t for everyone but I’ve been fortunate to work very closely and be friends with a fair few recruitment agency founders. They’re all their own people, all individuals but I’ve found they tend to share some common traits so I thought I’d scribble them down as a guide to those who are planning on setting up their own recruitment firms. 

Ambition

The first is an easy one. Ambition. Most of the people I’ve met in recruitment have a certain degree of ambition, I’d say those pursuing a role in recruitment will tend to be more ambitious than your average person. The fact that a large portion of your salary is based on your commission and the fact that commissions are typically uncapped tend to attract the more ambitious individuals out there. 

Entrepreneurial

Kinda goes without saying but I had to add it here. I ran my own recruitment agency for 6 years, launched a job board and now have my own digital design agency developing websites for recruitment agencies. I know a half dozen recruitment agency founders who have had at least two businesses. Either your current recruitment business does well and you invest that extra cash into new businesses or you move into other businesses. Some people are just born or raised to be entrepreneurs and you can’t squash that! 

Tenacity 

I was going to say persistence here but ended up looking up the definition and decided that tenacity was the better choice of words. Persistence is you keep trying something even if it isn't working without changing your approach towards it. However tenacity is when you keep trying something but if it doesn't work you try different approaches to achieve the same goal. And apparently if you’re interested perseverance is a combination of the two. When we’ve facing a strong economy, recruitment's great but as soon as we hit a downturn, recruitment can be bloody hard. And although we should be trying more and harder, sometimes we need to change our approach, the clients we’re working with, the way we source our candidates or the markets we’re targeting. 

Intelligence

Most of the recruitment founders I personally have known have been from the media industry and to be frank the media industry is a little elitist when it comes to education. The large majority of roles used to require a degree as a minimum and you had to be shit hot and have a valid reason why you didn’t attend university if you didn’t have a degree. Anyway, almost all of the recruitment founders I know are pretty intelligent people, it’s typically a mixture of book smart, street smart and being commercially minded. There’s a lot of hats you have to wear when starting up a recruitment agency such as accountant, marketer, new business manager, solicitor, manager and of course recruitment consultant. 

Hard Worker

Recruitment is tough, long hours and hard work so you can imagine running a recruitment firm is even tougher and harder! For the first couple of years of running your new recruitment business you can expect to be working 10 hours a day and even weekends if need be. Once your firm is established, you have a professionally designed recruitment website. you have regular clients, an accountant, maybe a staff member or two, then you can slow down a little and take your foot off the peddle 

Energetic

Links in with the hard work but working in recruitment takes a lot of energy. You’re working long hours, you’ll probably spend 1.5 hrs - 2 hrs on the telephone each day pacing around your office / spare bedroom. Every time you jump on a call you need that infectious energy when speaking about a new role with a potential candidate or when pitching a new client. No one wants to have a video or telephone call with an energy vampire ("What We Do In The Shadows" reference there).

Creative

Not strictly true for all recruitment founders but I think you need a little bit of creativity when launching any business. There’s always stuff like your company name, logo, recruitment website design, email signature, brand colours, product / service design, etc where you need at least a little bit of creativity. 

Storytelling

Selling is storytelling and vice versa and marketing is probably storytelling too. Maybe everything is storytelling?! Anyway the best sales people I know and also the most charismatic people I know, have this innate ability to tell a story. Personal branding is still big even if it is more important to pick up the phone to your clients and meet them face to face in this market. Your clients and candidates want to know about you as a person and your story. I think I’m a pretty good sales person but I’m not the best storyteller but then I’ve got some tough competition in my friends and extended family. 

Numbers, Details & Cash

I’m lumping these altogether as I think they’re all related. I don’t know what the personality trait would be where you’re good at all of these but you need to be good at all of these. Of course get yourself an accountant but you’re still going to need to keep an eye on the numbers, be detail oriented and keep on top of the cash flow. Chase up those invoices as soon as they’re due and try to negotiate longer payment periods where possible. 

Charismatic / Likeable

Now I’m not saying you have to be the most charismatic person in your friends circle but you need to at least be likeable and all the founders I’ve known have at least been likeable, on the outside at least. Some of them have been complete dicks but on the outside and to the public they’ve appeared to be likeable. You need your candidates, clients and maybe your team in part to like you. In all fairness there will be a lot of times your team doesn’t like you but that’s just part of running a business. 

If you feel like we’ve just described you then it’s probably time you set up your own recruitment agency and if you’re looking for a website for your new agency then just get in touch.