This may sound negative and the last thing I want to do is to come across this way, but I have learnt that the placements you expect to come in don’t and the ones that do are the ones you least expect.

When I chose this title I was thinking of my worst experience of setting up a new recruitment consultancy, which are the restrictive covenants in your contract prohibiting you ability to operate another recruitment consultancy.

I had first hand experience of this with a company I joined, where they managed to stop the company from operating, although this is quite rare it can happen. Knowing this when I started my own agency I knew I had to have a back up plan, just in case my ex employer tried the same thing, as a result I am glad I did.

If this should happen to you, then my experience below will I hope help you to succeed, you will just need to modify it for your own market and knowledge.

When I started on my own I set up a recruitment consultancy for Healthcare Sales as this is what I have been doing for the last 10 years. Knowing what could happen, I knew I needed a backup plan. As a result I picked a market that I was comfortable with and that was general sales recruitment for the local market.

With this in mind and at the same time as setting up the healthcare side, I bought the local newspapers, plus back issues and cut out every sales advert for a 3 month period, as they had contacts names and telephone numbers. This meant I had a list of live contacts I could use given the worst case scenario, which as it turned out I needed. So the next day I started to canvas these company and it began to produce an alternative revenue to the point a new division was created. And of course when the restrictive covenants had expired we were able to do Healthcare once again.

It is also worth noting that it is quite rare for companies to try to take you to court, as it is very costly for them and negative energy, but it does pay to be one step ahead.

And the other point is if you expect the worst then over compensate create more opportunities, so that the placements you don’t expect come in.

Tags: restrictive covenants

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