I want to start a Placement Consultancy. Need help and suggestions how to be an effective starter.
From India, New Delhi
Raghav,

There are 4 major areas you need to focus on in order to start and run an placement agency.

1) Registration

2) Sourcing of Profiles/Talents/CVs (WELL) - How ?

3) Look out for Business from Market (- How ?

4) Define process for providing services & getting charges for the same

5) Match-making - refining work - coordination - closure

6) payment & paper work

The first thing is to get your firm registered with the local registeration office under the shops & establishment act. For this, you need to have a firm name and fill up a simple form with your address and a small fee. Once you have this certificate, you need to get a PAN number for yourself if you are the proprietor. With this, you can then get an bank account openned. Then you need to get the service tax number.

At the actual business front, You need to make up your mind as to for which segment of companies you are going to work i.e.: whether for retail, construction, pharmaceuticals, engineering, petrochemical, etc. Start with the segment which you are aware of or are comfortable with. Check as to from where you are going to source the profiles of candidates (your "Well"). It could be the job protals like Naukri, Monster, Jobsahead, etc or could even be the free sites like linkedin. You may even create your own website for the same, but then you need to brand it for candidates to see and apply. An registered email id and an "catchy" name for your firm is a "must". Temporarily, you may even use a general email id. You also do need to built up a database of the companies for the segment for which you intend to work as this will help reduce your time when it'll come to sourcing specific profiles for your clients.

Secondly, you look for companies in the segment you want to start on with. Say, it's pharmaceuticals. So, go in for growing or new pharmaceutical companies or those who are into expansion or projects as they may have more vacancies (business) to give to you. A saturated or an existing company would already have it's own pool of consultants/candidates and hence may not readily respond/give business to you. Once you go, meet & discuss with them, check with them about the positions they intend to fill up and get the business. Before that, discuss the terms & conditions (agreeable to both of you), fix up the placement charges and other payment related aspects. The same needs to be stamped and signed-off by both the parties on an contract paper which is called the "Terms & Conditions" agreement. This defines all the aspects related to the way the business is to be done, the process, the timeline for various deliveries, the non-poaching clause, the service charges, additional charges, the replacement clause, the payment timeline & other payment details, etc.

To begin with, try to work on few positions and for few companies only. Always remember, placement consultancy is a service based business. The quality of the services is what every client is concerned about. Do not give any unnecessary commitments. Promises, if made should be fulfilled. If at any stage, you feel that there are chances of delay or failure, please keep your client informed (so that he will make alternate arrangements), so that they are aware of your efforts. Always keep in touch with your clients on regular basis.

Remember one thing. An client company may have many consultants with whom they might have tied up & be working with, but they "bank" on a very few of these consultancy firms. Your efforts should be to get into this list so that when it comes to giving business related to filling up of critical or senior positions, it comes to you.

Like all business, you also need to keep yourself one step ahead. So, once you are comfortable with a few companies in one particular segment, look on to geting into another segment and do the same. Do not deal with more companies within the same segment as it will limit your data source. (Say, if there are 20 good pharma companies, you should deal with not more than 20% of them. This will give you the leverage to source/headhunt talents from the remaining 80% of the competitor companies. Once you are comfortable with the 20% of the companies in the same segment, you may increase the client ration from 20-80 to 25-75, but my advice is to not go beyond it). Rather than getting volume business, focus on quality, atleast for the initial few years. This will help you get good "brand name" from your client companies.

The most important thing is the payment related aspect. Please be very clear and transparent with your client regarding the same. Sending correct invoice with details related to PAN no, service tax no., etc and regular followup will ensure that you get the payments on time as per the agreement. And ofcourse, do not forget the service tax aspect.

Once you are done with these, you should focus on areas which will help improve the quality of your working. We can discuss on that later.

Any more queries, revert to me.

All the best Raghav.

Cheers

From India, Mumbai
Attn: mail8013
Sir,
Your suggestion on a start-up placement service is very enlightening.
We are HR consultants based in TN. We have recently started a separate division for placement services. We are already serving reputed automobile dealers and construction companies in this region. We have some good resource on middle & senior level IT professionals based in Chennai & B'lore. We are looking for some T-II companies to work with.
Can you assist us in this regard?
Thanks,
Baskar Perumal
Cogere Technologies

From India, Madras
Dear Mail 8013,
That is a great Help to professionals planning to start a Placement Consultancy.
However, one of my friends is facing following problem:
He is managing a small Placement Agency, but since he can not source CVs form portals all by himself, over the last one year, he recruited two executives.
But these executives left him and started their own consultancy in just three months each.
With out staff u can not manage a PRA..
Any suggestions?
Regards

From India
Hi,
You can hire an experienced HR recruiter to work for you on part time basis.
Im working as a Sr.HR Recruiter in a Consultancy Firm since last 4 years. If you are interested, then I can source profiles for your friend's consultants frinm on a part time basis.
Get back to me.

From India, Mumbai
Hi Raghav The information shared by you is very usfull for me. Thank you so much for information. I am also starting my own consultancy.It will be very usfull for me.
From India, Pune
Raghav I have experience of over 11 years in HR and am keen on starting on my own. My speciality is the financial sector. What is your sector of interest. Maybe we could have a chat.
From India, Nagpur
Dear raghav and all ,
I got , you are going to start a job consult. fine but be clear , you should understand difference between placement and recruitment .
1. Placement - if we provide the job any particulars person than it's placement
2. Recruitment - if we fill the blank post or full fill the requirement of an organization than it's recruitment
for placement , you need requirements in bulk of the companies .
for recruitment , you need candidate in bulk ( freshers and exp. ) as per need.
in case of recruitment i can help you for all over India........
for any query feel free call me.
regards,
kapil rathore
HRM Indore
mb. 09039381496

From India, Bhopal
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