FREE EBOOK! A RECRUITMENT GUIDE ON HOW TO BUILD A LAPTOP LIFESTYLE RECRUITMENT BUSINESS
Table of Contents Chapter 1 Why Lifestyle? 1 Chapter 2 The 12 Pillars 3 Pillar 1 - Niche Market Pillar 2 - Market Leader Pillar 3 - Virtual Assistant Team Pillar 4 - Social Sourcing Pillar 5 - Candidate Rating System Pillar 6 - Candidate Funnel Pillar 7 - Hire Remote Recruiters Pillar 8 - Strong Website Pillar 9 - Client Delivery Model Pillar 10 - Metrics System Pillar 11 - Lifestyle Pillar 12 - Case Study Videos 4 5 Chapter 3 How to hire your first VA? 6 Advertising and Recruiting Task Assignment How much would you have to pay your VA? What do you get your VA to do? Setting up your response sheets 8 10 Summary 11
CHAPTER 1 WHY LIFESTYLE? There are two main reasons Business Owners and Entrepreneurs take the big leap of faith and decide to set up their own recruitment agency: They ve been working for someone else, and are tired of seeing most of their commission swallowed by the company. They may be sick of working long days and think, I want more choice, more freedom and more flexibility. If not for these two reasons, then it s for money. Everyone wants to make more money, and a lot of business owners believe that with an extra bit of income they ll be happier. However, it didn t take me long to realise that lifestyle and freedom are what everyone craves deep down- not cash. Now, imagine; you ve set up your recruitment agency, you re working longer hours than you were before and you don t feel like you ve got that flexibility you desired when you initially set up. Sound familiar? Or, you re working for someone else, feel like you re ready to take the leap and start your own recruitment business, but you re just not sure how. Either path, you feel like you don t know all of the fundamental steps and procedures you need to endure to build a business by yourself. I know first hand that it s a lonely world when you first start up, and the best advice I ever received was making sure that I surrounded myself with mentors, with people who have already been there, and done that. If any of the above sounds relatable, then don t worry, the solution is in this book. Referring back to when I first started, almost three years ago when I was working in a leading IT recruitment firm. I d experienced great success moving through from consultant through to having shares in the business, managing a team of eight staff who managed to build a new market up to a million pounds PERM fees, within its first year. I remember sitting after work one evening and checking my bank balance, I was overdrawn again. I d spent all of my commission and cash. I was earning a good salary too, taking home around 5,000 pounds a month plus, so there was no reason for me to be overdrawn. However, I kept finding that the more money I made, the more I spent. I ended up in a cycle 1
Chapter 1: Why Lifestyle? That evening the penny dropped and I thought to myself I m un-happy and stressed, and realised that this cycle was preventing me from defining what I truly wanted in life. That s when I decided to quit. Looking back I m surprised it took me so long to realise what was out there, I ve always been ambitious and driven, it was just a matter of waiting until the time was right. It was a difficult time, I was going through a stressful period, finding myself at crossroads of making a strategic decision that would end up changing my life. Finally, after being stuck within the corporate world. I had my shot of becoming a business owner. Initially my focus was on securing an investment so I could replicate the business model used by typical recruitment firms: people at desks, cold calling to get jobs, mailshotting to get candidate interviews - driven by KPI s. Very quickly I began to realise that this was going to be an uphill struggle that led me right back to where I was in my last role- unhappy and stressed. It was at this point I scrapped that business plan and thought I m going to write down every thought that is in my mind of what I truly want in my business, in my life, and everything else. By doing this I was able to pinpoint the factors that truly mattered to me. Obviously I wanted income, but I also wanted a business that wasn t dependent on me 24/7. I wanted a business that gave me the freedom to work when I wanted, on the aspects that I enjoyed most. So, I began planning a different business model and strategy. I built a picture in my mind of what I imagined my recruitment business to be, and I moulded it around my lifestyle. My business was build around me first; I defined the hours I wanted to work, the days I wanted off, and what I would be doing in my time in the office. During this, I came across a great book called E-Myth Revisited, which taught me about making sure your business was systemised. From this i started building a virtual team, outsourcing all the tasks I didn t enjoy doing. I made note of everything each staff member and myself did, to make sure I was building systems that weren t reliant on me. So, fast fowarding 6 months from that point, I was really enjoying the business. We grew from strength to strength, and I realised that by making things simple and planning out what I wanted in my life, I was able to reflect this in the business. In the first few months we managed to win numerous exclusive clients by using a unique, inbound strategy. This meant I never had to make one cold call, I never had to chase a lead, we built that strategy with just myself, a recruiter and our team of virtual assistants. Reflecting from then over our first year, I was amazed to see how we d grown. We had a healthy six figure profit in the business, and I managed to buy my first Porsche 911, and go on six holidays in the first year. This was the life that I wanted to live. Gone were the days that I wanted a big 100 million, 500 man recruitment business. What I wanted was a good, six figure income from a business that was on its way to producing a million pounds, whilst also maintaining flexibility and freedom. 2
CHAPTER 2 THE 12 PILLARS When starting my business I set up the 12 key pillars for my recruitment agency. These pillars not only laid the foundations of the agency, but prove to be really instrumental to me, when building my business to where it is today- on track to achieve almost 1 million within two years of starting the business. Pillar 1 - Niche Market First, I built out the markets. I needed to map out what my niche was, and which market they operated in. The only way to do this is my conducting extensive research. Obviously, you ve got helpful tools like LinkedIn for instance, but to fully capitalise on opportunity, I build in lots of little sub-niches that allowed me to tailor better material for those candidates. Once I had identified my niche, I tested the market with an email campaign that automatically followed up with clients. This allowed me to see what was hot in the market and define which direction we needed to go. So, step one is building a market, establishing your niche and building out the first lead campaign. Pillar 2 - Market Leader Secondly, I needed to make sure that I was the leader in my market. The business needed to be an authority figure, so it was clear we had to create content, distribute it 24/7 and engage with candidates and clients 24/7. Pillar 3 - Virtual Assistant Team The third part, was building my virtual assistant (VA) team. We have a team of 10 VA s who have a series of set tasks, and one-off-tasks. 3
Chapter 2: The 12 Pillars Pillar 41 - Social Niche Market Sourcing Fourth, was social sourcing. This refers to a system that the VA team could manage, and use to reach out to candidates, ensuring that we were constantly engaging with them. Pillar 5 - Candidate Rating System Fifth, we had to adapt our strategy to take into consideration that our VA team couldn t differentiate a good candidate from the bad as naturally as we could. To overcome this, you have to develop a candidate rating system based on a number of factors. Pillar 6 - Candidate Funnel We also wanted to ensure we weren t just reaching out to active candidates, but we were also nurturing those who were passive. To do this, we developed a candidate funnel, where you maintain consistent interaction with the candidate, giving value in the form of blogs, videos, ebooks, case studies, and content. Over a long period of time this engagement allows you to build a rapport with your candidates so they know you, like you and trust you. Pillar 7 - Hire Remote Recruiters The seventh pillar is hiring remote recruiters. You don t want to be tied down by staff members in the office, you want the freedom to work from where-ever you are in the world. This pillar is designed to maintain your freedom, whilst scale your business. Again, I ve developed a unique system to hire remote recruiters that work from home which i will share with you in a coming podcast. Pillar 8 - Strong Website Eight is making sure you have a strong website, that converts candidates and clients. It s more attractive to have a brochure site, but in reality, you need your website to be interactive, allowing you to capture data and represent everything you offer within your business. Initially, I made sure we had an outline of a good business, built on WordPress. We then used opt-in pages, e-books and a software system called leadpages that developed our strategy. We then introduced a strong SEO system and ensured our website was interactive. By implementing all of these steps we are able to track who has clicked on what, and in turn generate clicks into leads. 4
Chapter 2: The 12 Pillars Pillar 91 - Client Niche Market Delivery Model Step 9, is developing your client delivery model. To do this we have introduced a seven step system to present to clients why we re different. Unlike other recruitment agencies, this system has productized our service. So, most service businesses aren't worth much money if you go to sell them, because it's only as good as the last month that they billed, or the people that they've got in the business. This is why I very quickly adopted, and made sure that I built products within my service business, to differentiate ourselves in the market. Pillar 10 - Metric System Pillar 10, was building a metrics system. This in essence, is a reporting tool of all the key metrics we have in the business. This incorporated the leads coming in, the contacts added, the interviews taking place, the deals, and so much more. I made sure we had a Google sheet, and a reporting tool, that allowed me to see in the click of a button what the metrics were within the business. Alongside the metrics systems, you can also build your dream 100 list. A great book I d recommend here is written by an author called Chet Holes, and he talks about building your dream 100 client list. So, I took the advice from his book and made a target list of the top 100 clients we wanted to work with within our sector. I then build my strategy around the dream 100, analysis how I would engage with them and how I would get repeat business from them. Pillar 11 - Lifestyle Pillar 11, is teaching the lifestyle. This covers the likes of your finance, operations, email management, outsourcing, getting you out of your inbox, creating the lifestyle that you longed for. Pillar 12 - Case Study Videos The final pillar would be your case study videos. Case studies work extremely well in recruitment. If you can secure a candidate that will start doing case study videos - then that can be a really big win for you. If this is something you d like to do I ve got a set template and structure of how my business built out the case study and used it as promotional material to potential clients and candidates in the market. 5
CHAPTER 3 HOW TO HIRE YOUR FIRST VA? 1 This Advertising and Recruiting chapter will go through the key steps you need to take when hiring your VA. Virtual Assistants are a great way of taking away some of the frustration associated with the day to day runnings of your business, from data mapping to email responding, or even diary managing- VA s can free up a lot of your time. So, the first thing you need to do is identify the tasks you ll want your VA to complete; from this you ll be able to create the job specification. 6
Chapter 3: How to Hire Your First VA? For example, you need someone who has experience mapping out a market someone who is good with dealing with data. As you can see from the screenshot below I use a website called Fiverr. When you carry out this search, the key thing you re looking for is relevance. You need to find someone with a profile that matches with your job criteria. One thing you must be careful of on certain sites is companies subleasing their VA s It may be appear as a profile, but you can tell by the email etc that the company is subleasing the VA, meaning the applicant will in fact be paid less. So, with that in mind and your job advert live you will then see applicants messaging your inbox coming directly to you. This saves you a lot of time and works really well. 7
Chapter 3: How to Hire Your First VA? 2 Now Task Assignment you ve hired your VA, you need to work out exactly what they ll be doing. So, here s an example of what you can get your VA s to do: Eventually, once you have started to grow and build your VA team, you could consider hiring more specialist staff members, for example an SEO Specialist. We have part-time staff that do the SEO for our business, which really allows us to capitalise on our website. If you re thinking of the longer term plans with your VA s then you could eventually have a part-time developer to carry out your Word Press web development. 8
Chapter 3: How to Hire Your First VA? 3 The How much would you have to pay your VA? price of the VA depends entirely on their skill set. If you re hiring more skilled VA s you re going to be paying higher market rates. What we re looking for initially though is just a general VA, someone who s going to charge between $2.50 - $5 an hour. I m confident that you ll be able to find someone within that range to do the database entry. Eventually, once you have started to grow and build your VA team, you could consider hiring more specialist staff members, for example an SEO Specialist. We have part-time staff that do the SEO for our business, which really allows us to capitalise on our website. If you re thinking of the longer term plans with your VA s then you could eventually have a part-time developer to carry out your Word Press web development. So, you can hire someone to start building these data sets, but as they get more experienced and developed within the company, you can start delegating further tasks to them. For instance you might get them to design a PDF or manage your emails, manage your google calendar or CRM system. There are plenty of avenues that you can get your VA to explore and grow. Do not be surprised if you don t always get the right hire. Finding and hiring VA s is not as simple as it sounds, and it s all about perseverance. 4 The What do you get your VA to do? first task for your general VA is mapping out the market. You need to make sure your sheet is fully written out in Google Sheets e.g. including First Name, Last Name, Job Title, Email, etc. record a video explaining in detail what you want them to do, how you want it to be done. For this, I d recommend using a software called LOOM. In your video you need to explain how they would find the spreadsheet, what data they re looking for, how they would carry out the search and share a few tips with them. Once it s recorded, let your VA watch it a few times, get them to ask you questions, and then via screen share on video call, spend an hour or so with them and go through a few with them. Once you ve done this you should have 60%-70% of that task ready to hand over to the VA. If they do a good job, that s great because you can keep them and build them as part of your team and on board them. 9
Chapter 3: How to Hire Your First VA? If not, then you can just have them build your data sets and be done. You have no ties, you re not hiring a full time employee. This is a win-win. The recording of the video s does require a little bit of work, but trust me, it s beyond worth it. Now I m in a position where two years down the line I ve got videos of everything. All my VA s are fully trained on every single task that we do- and I never have to teach them again. This is a way of building for the future- always bear that in mind. 5 The Setting up your response sheets next thing you want to do is set up your Google Docs live response sheet. You re going to be filling in the responses initially, but eventually you ll be handing this over to your VA. This is all part of building the automated systems and strategies that allow you to create that lifestyle recruitment business that will give you the freedom and flexibility you want as a business owner. So, now you have your database up and running, your responses are in place So, to summarise, hire your VA, start your database mapping and build your response sheet. Those are the very, very basic, introductory steps to hiring your first VA. The potentials the Virtual Assistants have are limitless. 10
Summary So, to summarise: 1 2 3 Start your VA off with one single, repetitive task that you really hate- get that step-bystep process in place. Then start giving them your daily, weekly and monthly tasks; this could be tasks like updating your CRM, adding notes, dealing with book keeping, creating PDF brochures, connecting in with candidates on Linkedin. I would then outsource your calendar management and then eventually outsource your email. The more complicated tasks and one off tasks can be given to them later once you free your tme up with the boring tasks it will FREE you up to work less hours IN your business to give you more hours to work ON the business. This is only one pillar of building your lifestyle remote recruitment business. If you would like to find out more about building the rest of the pillars feel free to get in touch with a free 30 minutes strategy call with James where he will assess your business, and give you an overview of how he could help. Everything I ve covered in this book I have used in my own recruitment business, Ronald James. I can teach you how to build a systemised business using automation, and help you build candidate and client sourcing systems that are managed by virtual teams. You will be given all the tools and materials you need to have the lifestyle you want whilst making money up to 6 figures + in your first year. When I first started my recruitment business there were a lot of frustrations and lessons I learnt that I wish I knew at the start, which is why I developed entrepreneurjames.com. 11
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