How I Built My Recruitment Brand: A Case Study

One of the most important aspects of starting your own recruitment business is developing a recognisable brand.

With so many recruitment agencies in the market, you’d think that was a pretty tall order, but Sanjay Rao was able to do just that, for very little money.

Sanjay told us, “I had built up a really good client and candidate list working at a high street agency that specialised in financial recruitment and, even though I was desperate to start my own business, I was determined not to lose my reputation I had built up. I had seen a few other recruitment consultants start their own agencies thinking that they would easily be able to pick up with their clients and candidates, but they seemed to fail when the people chose to stick with the tried and tested agency name instead of going with the new agency. I wanted to make sure this didn’t happen to me.”

Name and Logo

Sanjay decided that he would put the brand of his newly-formed recruitment agency at the top of his To Do List.

He continued, “I realised that, in order to make sure existing clients and candidates continued to work with me at my own agency, I needed to make the brand strong enough for them to believe in. I knew they already liked working with me as we had built a strong working relationship over a few years, but I had also seen that you can’t just assume that people will work with you at your new company.”

Sanjay wanted to make a tangible, professional recruitment agency brand that did not just look like he was running the business from his spare bedroom (even though he was!). The first port of call was a great name and logo, so he commissioned a graphic designer friend to come up with some designs. He decided to use a fresh, yet corporate sounding company name, rather than following current trends, which he felt made the business sounds more established.

With a good name and a clean logo, Sanjay then spent some of his business start up budget on getting good quality stationery printed.

New Ideas for Building a Brand

In order to build his brand further, Sanjay joined a networking breakfast club. This involved a weekly breakfast meeting where he was able to meet other business owners and share referrals from interested parties.

Sanjay also wrote a couple of articles on starting a recruitment business for a recruitment industry trade publication. He explained, “I simply approached the magazine and said that I had started my own agency and would like to write them a couple of articles about what I had learnt. They were happy to publish them as long as I didn’t go on about my company name in the piece, but it was really good for brand awareness and I had a couple of clients come through it.”

The last way in which Sanjay built his brand during the early days of his recruitment agency was to set up as many as possible client visits. Even though he had visited his clients previously, he was keen to show the continuity of his new agency and that he was able to establish new rates and negotiate new deals, now that he was the boss of his own agency.