Your agency is growing - isn’t it time to say goodbye to Jack?

A recent report found that 25% of an average business owner’s working week is taken up attending meetings that are either unnecessary or take longer than they should. Add the number of non-fee generating activities that recruitment business owners need to do into the mix and it’s a wonder there is any time left to do what the sign above your office says you do – Recruitment!

Time is a precious commodity, and while we will all be familiar with the phrase We all have the same 24 hours in a day, the question is how do we find that 25^th hour to successfully complete all the things we need to do simply to keep the wheels of our businesses in motion? It comes down to understanding the art of delegation.

Being the best biller in your last role before starting your own recruitment business is great, but only in the sense that you know you will always be able to generate income. The challenge is knowing how to grow your business and to do so at a rate that suits you best.

When you worked for ‘the man’ there was always someone else who would sort out the invoicing, do the payroll and all manner of other everyday tasks. Now you have to do it yourself and before long you will find yourself transformed as a veritable Jack-of-all-Trades, taking on the roles not just of chief biller in your new business but also the accountant, credit controller, administrator, compliance officer, marketer, IT helpdesk…the list goes on and will get worse as you grow.

So how do you find time to do all of these things to a standard that a) you want them to be done, and b) that the law says you need them to be done? The answer: you need to consider delegating to an external provider. 

During your career to date, you will have mastered the art of selling recruitment. But it will have taken time to hone these skills and now you have reached the point when you realise you are at the top of your game - as evidenced by the fact that you have opted to jump ship and swim the seas in search of your career nirvana. So why get bogged down trying to master all the skills required to effectively run a recruitment back office function – wouldn’t your time be better served doing what you do best i.e. selling?

Recruitment is, as you know, a highly competitive industry and that is why it is imperative to the success of your recruitment business that you play to your strengths. That means partnering with an organisation who can take over the responsibility of managing those multiple back office roles at a consistently high standard; thereby, freeing you to focus all your time and energies on fee-generating activities.

Think of it like this: When you add the total amount of time spent each week raising invoices, chasing outstanding payments, paying your workers, dealing with HMRC queries, verifying terms of business and collating timesheets, how much time do you have left to pitch new clients? How many new clients could you have spoken to in the time it took to perform some of the duties above?

Time, spent the wrong way that is, really does cost you and your business money. The number one reason why recruitment agencies don’t grow as fast or as big as their founders had hoped is because the people running them try to be the Jack-of-all-Trades.

Great recruitment agency owners will always find new ways of doing things faster, smarter and more efficiently. They will recognise where their strengths lie and the importance of handing the tasks that hold them back to someone else. In doing do, they are the ones who will grow at the pace they know they can and steal the march on their competition.

So the next time you are sat at your desk saying to yourself, “There has got to be a better way to do this, surely”, now you know there is. Say ‘Bye, bye’ to Jack.