Recruitment firm owners are a busy group of people. It’s tough to make time for all the various tasks that need to happen to sustain a business … and still maintain your personal production. If you’re just getting started as an entrepreneur, or have an extremely small staff, it’s critical that you save the bulk of your time for the activities that directly make money. That means you need to make some choices about the other tasks. Assuming those other tasks actually do need to get completed, you should consider outsourcing some of your workload. Here are 7 tasks to consider:
- Accounting / bookkeeping. Fussy administrative details don’t seem to be the forte of many recruitment firm owners I know. Accounting / bookkeeping activities certainly fall into that category. Save yourself the time and the stress of mistakes, and farm this one out.
- Payroll. Like the above, payroll is definitely a task you can outsource without losing control of your business. Whether you hire someone to do it or simply use a cloud-based service, there are many options that can save you time.
- Web design. Just because you *can* build a site with a do-it-yourself service doesn’t mean you should. As recruitment firm owners, your website is one of the most important tools your business has. It should be mobile-friendly, include at least one lead-capture mechanism for both clients and job seekers, a blog, have robust search engine optimization, and a good career portal that lets applicants apply directly to your open jobs. Those features likely involve more technical know-how and time than you can spare. Hire an expert.
- Research. There are a host of services that can develop call lists or other lists of pre-qualified job seekers faster than you, often at very reasonable rates.
- IT. For a small firm, you may want to be familiar with basic networking and connectivity, but being the “IT guy” is definitely not a money-making activity. Conversely, when your technology goes down, it can definitely cost you time, money, and productivity. Let the pros handle this one.
- Marketing. For recruitment firm owners, effective marketing can help differentiate yourself from your competition. While it’s good to be involved in your overall messaging, it’s probably not something you can “own” on a day-in, day-out basis. Look to outsource this, particular design elements and especially if you can avoid purchasing or licensing expensive software.
- Social Media / Content Management. Social media should definitely be part of your mix, but not necessarily yours to manage. Hiring someone you trust to do this on behalf of your business is a good use of money, particular combined with one or more free/low-cost monitoring tools. You don’t necessarily need to hire an expensive agency.
What do you think of my list? What items would you add or delete? Comment below!
