4 hours sleep means a thankfully short blog from me today. My lack of sleep is of course due to last night being the night of New Zealand’s premium Recruitment networking event, the Rice PowWow. Now call me biased, and you can enjoy your Meetups, but nothing beats a PowWow when it’s on the form of last night. Recruitment heavyweights not limited to Lisa Cooley, Simon Rooney, Lee Marshall, Troy Hammond, Matt Bartlett, James Brooke, Emma Scott, the Lloyd clan, Al Shorten, and even that miserable, skinny, tee-totaller, Geordie Dave Girdlestone were all in attendance to find out what this Recruitment Entrepreneur shizzle is all about. I’ve blogged about Recruitment Entrepreneur previously, so if you want the background you can read it here. For those not in attendance and too lazy to read the previous blog, last night was a vigorous debate between myself and the always divisive, but equally engaging Jason Walker on the pros and cons of the Recruitment Entrepreneur (RE) model. To bring people up to speed, the CliffsNotes on RE are as follows:
- Recruitment Entrepreneur is the investment vehicle of recruitment entrepreneur and former Dragon’s Den “dragon” James Caan
- RE co-funds recruiters to launch their own recruitment firm, providing capital, process, structure, support, and a clearly defined exit strategy
- RE don’t do this for free however, insisting on a majority shareholding of your business, arguing that they are essentially offering an unsecured loan, with you being the only security
- Tribe provide the local support and administration, essentially building a business to compete against their own
A tough sell no doubt, but one that at least one Recruiter has already gone for, and last night was Jason’s opportunity to convince a bunch of recruiters that this actually made sense. Strangely, as much as I was positioned to be the Apollo Creed to Jason’s Rocky, my view on Recruitment Entrepreneur may run counter to the majority of recruiters in Aotearoa. The feedback I’ve received from most recruiters is that they would never give away a majority shareholding of their business from day one. Following feedback from last night, I’d suggest that in a room full of 100 recruiters, 98 people would say that Recruitment Entrepreneur is a flawed concept.
Of those 98 people, 70% of those people are probably wrong.
As much as we love to be plucky recruiters who build a recruitment empire, most of us, and I’m including myself here, are absolutely clueless on how we go about doing it. For those with this rare skill-set of being great recruiters, great leaders, great accountants, great marketers, great administrations, Recruitment Entrepreneur offers very little. You guys can stop reading now and go about your day knowing that you are in a tiny minority. For most recruiters, the best chance we have of selling a business for seven figures in New Zealand probably, and perhaps sadly, lies with Recruitment Entrepreneur. I’m in no way affiliated with RE, I like Jason although find him as infuriating as you do, and Tribe are a good client, but I’m just calling it as I see it. RE is far from perfect, the relationship with Tribe is weird, Jason will probably drive you round the bend, but I will absolutely concede that they will help most recruiters build a sellable business that is valued at more than double of what you would have achieved by yourself. Some of us just need to put a dollar value on our own ego and make a judgement after that.
Anyway, I promised a short blog. Thanks to all those in attendance. It was lovely to catch up with some old faces, and meet a few new ones.
Enjoy your weekend at all costs.
^SW
