Getting Funding for My Recruitment Business: A Case Study

Ask any inventor or creative type and they will tell you that it gets pretty tedious when people give them ‘ideas’ all the time.

You may think that a writer would love to be given ideas for a storyline, or that a film maker would kill for a subject to film, but the truth is that the idea is the easy bit.

It’s not just the case in creative arts, either, as recruitment agency boss Rebecca Grey, 26, explained. “I always knew that I wanted to start my own recruitment business – I loved my job I just didn’t like having a boss! Friends and family would say that I should start my own agency and I would get so frustrated because I already knew that! The problem was that I didn’t know how to fund it or deal with all the business stuff. I kept putting it off because I didn’t really know where to start.”

Where to Find Business and Funding Advice?

No one in Rebecca’s family had their own business and she did not know where to go for advice. Although friends and family were supportive, they were not able to offer any real practical advice, so she felt rather alone. Rebecca worked at a high street recruitment agency and so was not able to talk to her line manager or boss, even though they would have been able to offer some good advice.

Rebecca continued, “Out of desperation, I decided to go and see my bank manager. They were the only person I could think of who might be able to point me in the right direction for some business advice. I knew that I had the passion and skills to start a business, so I hoped they would recognise that and help me. As it turned out, they were quite helpful and pointed me in the direction of the Prince’s Trust.”

The Prince’s Trust was able to give Rebecca some really helpful information. She was assigned a business mentor who helped her to write a clear and professional business plan, including advice on budgeting and marketing. They were also able to help with funding, with match-funding offered by her bank.

Help and Support

It was this help and support that was to prove invaluable for Rebecca. She told us, “I can’t tell you what a difference the Prince’s Trust made to me setting up a recruitment agency – without them I don’t think I would have been able to get the idea of the ground. It really made me appreciate that a good business is very little to do with a good idea – although you have to have that too – and all to do with learning how to get paid for something. I am proud to say that my business has gone from strength to strength – I learnt all about business development too – and I have already paid back the initial funding that was lent to me.”