Launching and Growing a Contract Recruitment Business
The Mike Ames Recruitment Show
Release Date: 10/08/2024
Moving across to a retained only model
The Mike Ames Recruitment Show
On average, UK contingent recruiters get paid for 20% of their efforts. For retained recruiters it’s 98%. Fancy learning how to only do retained work? To be clear, switching to retained could boost your profits by 500% (just do the maths). Our next guest on the MARShow is Greg Elton of search firm Day-2, is 100% retained and has been for years. Some of you might be saying “he probably only does mega-deals which is why they are retained” Well, you’d be wrong. True, some of his placements are very chunky, but Greg maintains any salary over £40k can be on a retained basis, if...
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Start doing business in America
The Mike Ames Recruitment Show
Those UK-based recruiters who decide to start placing people in America, rarely switch back to the UK. there are plenty of reasons for that. 💥 The market is less crowded: 12,500 rec firms in the US to 30,000 in the UK (and the market is 4 times bigger). 💥 Almost all candidates are open to a chat, even if they aren’t active. 💥 The fees are larger than the UK and clients haggle about them less, plus counteroffers are rare 💥 US hirers are easier to speak to and they seem to like UK recruiters a lot. You get treated with respect. But surely, it’s a nightmare to start trading in...
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How to get your audience's attention
The Mike Ames Recruitment Show
The big battle for all of us these days is getting the attention of people we want to read something we’ve written: emails, posts, adverts and CVs. Many of your emails you know will be useful to the recipient, are deleted unread. You can have written the greatest LinkedIn post in the world but if people don’t read it, then it will die a death. Likewise, a fantastic job will only draw in candidates if the advert promoting it gets the attention of the right people. Or how about CVs? Hiring managers receive stacks of them in their inbox. How can you make yours stand out, so they take the time...
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How to get more sales emails read
The Mike Ames Recruitment Show
When used properly, email is still a very effective sales and marketing tool. But things are changing, and you need to know how. All the email providers are getting much stricter these days in their drive to reduce the amount of spam in your Inbox. BTW, spam is just unwanted email so if you send marketing emails the email providers may view you as a spammer! Google and Yahoo have recently changed their policies and others are bound to follow. You must keep your spam rate below 0.3%, else you could have your email account blocked. Real bummer. There are several rules that you need to follow to...
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How to create and sell an RPO service
The Mike Ames Recruitment Show
Ever had that call from a client saying, “You’ve done a great job, but we’ve got an RPO in place now”? Well, you could be that RPO and here’s how. We welcome Jamie Stevenson as our guest because he offers full and micro RPOs to his clients. The benefits are enormous. You can often lock the client into a 12 month or longer contract and you’re in control of the vacancies during this time. Also, as the RPO supplier you’re often given a long lead-time on planned hires, which makes filling vacancies easier. During these difficult times it’s crucial to protect those clients who may...
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4 Zero-cost way to boost profits and reduce stress
The Mike Ames Recruitment Show
New Year is nearly upon us. Want to shake it up a bit, but not sure how? Well, here are 4 zero-cost ways to boost profits & reduce stress. “Why should I change things?” I hear you cry. Well, the market isn’t great, and trading conditions are tough. A less than business-friendly budget, EU and UK growth forecasts revised down, and Tariff Trump in the White House. True, there’s more private equity and VC money being injected into the economy, which will benefit everybody. But next year doesn’t look to be a bumper year for any of us. If you’re happy with the results you’re...
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How to be a £1Million biller on your own (with £7k placements)
The Mike Ames Recruitment Show
Whenever I hear “so and so is a million-pound biller” I always look for the catch. A hot client, huge fees or a team behind them. But our guest on this episode of the MARShow actually was a million-pound biller. His name is Mark Harris and he did it: 💥 Working on his own 💥 With average fees of £7k (yes, that’s 12 placements a month) 💥 Over 100 clients 💥 Only on a contingent deals He was quite literally a placement machine, and on the show to explain exactly how he did it. Of course, there were sacrifices to be made, and he made them, but the achievement in that one...
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How to BEAT the Competition in a Tough Market
The Mike Ames Recruitment Show
As the market gets tighter one thing to focus on is being better, or at least more preferable than your competition. Here are two ways to do this. Around here we say “Everything you need to be better than the competition is contained in the hearts and minds of your clients. All you need do is liberate it.” In other words, you need to find out from your client community: - ✅ Where you need to improve ✅ What you do that they like ✅ What the competition are up to ✅ How can you add extra value to them ✅ What is going to get their attention But, what’s the best way to do this?...
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How to get more Vacancies from TAs
The Mike Ames Recruitment Show
What would you give to spend time with a decision maker in a high value client to find out how to become a preferred supplier? Well now you can. In this episode of the #MARShow we interview Victoria Kirkhope, the ex-Chief People Officer for RSM UK. Amongst her many duties, she was responsible for selecting (and deselecting) recruitment agencies for the firms PSL. She is now an independent consultant and so has agreed to share the knowledge and experience she has built up over her career. We ask her advice on: - 💥 How you actually get to speak to somebody in authority 💥 What she looked...
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The Impact of AI in Recruitment
The Mike Ames Recruitment Show
How will AI impact the recruitment industry in the short, medium, and long term? A very interesting question. And we intend to answer it during this #MARShow with our special guest Max Armbruster. Max is the CEO and Founder of Talkpush, a leading-edge recruitment automation platform and the company behind Sam the AI voice recruiter. Over time there have been game-changing inventions: the wheel, harnessing steam, the internal combustion engine, computers and the internet. Each of these inventions created a revolution in their wake. AI is probably going to be more disruptive than all of them....
info_outlineOne of the best things you can do to boost revenues and make your business more valuable is launch a Contracts desk.
The benefits are enormous: recurring revenue, contractor reuse, bigger profits and a more rounded offering for your clients.
We love Perm but you have to reinvent your business every month whereas with a Contract desk you already have some revenue coming in.
Right then, in this edition of the #MARShow we’re going to explain how to start, grow and run a Contracts desk from scratch.
It will also make your business more valuable should you ever come to sell it.
We are joined by Tom Giles who already runs a very successful Contracts book and Rich Berrisford to cover how you would handle a much increased cashflow.
Together, we’ll look at: -
✅ The first things you need to do to get started
✅ How Contract differs from Perm
✅ The risks and pitfalls you will be exposed to (and how to overcome them)
✅ And how you finance the whole thing.
Somebody once told me they were bemused why people struggle past the money-pig that is contract to reach Perm.
Well, now’s your chance to get your snout in the Contract trough.