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Starting a recruitment agency is one of the best business decisions an experienced recruiter can make.
Low barriers to entry. High earning potential. A skill set you already have. And a market that rewards the people who execute well with the kind of financial freedom that most industries simply do not offer.
I started my first recruitment agency at 19 years old. No clients. No contacts. No safety net. Just a phone, a laptop, and a belief that I could make it work. By the end of that first year I had billed $2.5 million AUD. I went on to scale the business to $500,000 per month before it was acquired.
Since then I have built new agencies from scratch, invested in and mentored agency owners across Australia and New Zealand, and founded HeyAmara, an invite-only ecosystem for elite recruiters who are serious about building something significant.
This is the most practical and honest guide to starting a recruitment agency that you will find anywhere. No theory. No generic advice. Just what actually works, from someone who has done it at the highest level.
Before covering the how, it is worth being clear about the why. Because understanding what you are actually building changes how you approach every decision along the way.
A recruitment agency is not just a job. It is a business that, if built correctly, generates recurring revenue, creates real enterprise value, and gives you the kind of commercial and personal freedom that employment never can.
The best recruitment agencies are not competing on speed or price. They are operating as genuine specialists in a defined market. Clients call them first because they trust them. Candidates come to them because they understand their world. Revenue is consistent because the underlying relationships are deep.
That is what you are building when you start a recruitment agency. Not a job for yourself. A business.
The difference between those two things is everything. The decisions you make in the first six months of your agency will determine which one you end up with.
HJ Recruitment is the agency I run today. HeyAmara is the ecosystem I built for the recruiters who want to do the same. Both are products of the approach I am sharing in this guide.
Before you register a business name, before you set up a website, before you do anything else, you need to make one decision.
What is your niche?
This is the most important decision you will make when starting a recruitment agency. Everything else flows from it. Your candidate pipeline, your client base, your fee positioning, your marketing, your reputation. All of it is downstream of the niche you choose.
Generalist recruitment is a race to the bottom. You are competing with everyone, you are an expert in nothing, and there is no compelling reason for a client to call you first. Your fees will always be under pressure because your value is always in question.
Niche recruitment is the opposite. When you specialise in placing a specific type of professional in a specific type of business, you become the expert. Clients pay premium fees because your knowledge is genuinely valuable. Candidates come to you because you understand their market better than the recruiters who try to serve everyone.
Choose a niche where you have existing knowledge, contacts, or genuine interest. The steeper your learning curve, the slower your first year will be. The more head start you have in understanding the market, the faster you will build credibility with clients and candidates.
Strong niche options for recruitment agencies include technology and software engineering, construction and infrastructure, healthcare and nursing, finance and accounting, renewable energy, engineering and resources, executive and leadership, and trades and industrial.
The mechanics of registering a recruitment agency vary depending on where you are operating. Here are the key steps for the two markets where HJ Recruitment and HeyAmara are most active.
In Australia
Register your ABN at business.gov.au. If you are operating as a company, register with ASIC to obtain your ACN. Register for GST once your annual turnover exceeds $75,000 AUD.
If you plan to supply labour hire workers in Queensland, Victoria, or South Australia, you need a state-specific labour hire licence before you place your first worker. This is mandatory and the penalties for non-compliance are significant.
A company structure rather than sole trader is recommended for any agency that is serious about growth, liability protection, and eventually attracting investors or buyers.
In New Zealand
Register at companies.govt.nz to obtain your NZBN. Register for GST with Inland Revenue at ird.govt.nz once your turnover exceeds $60,000 NZD. Ensure you understand your obligations under the Employment Relations Act 2000, the Holidays Act 2003, and KiwiSaver employer contribution requirements if you are placing workers as employees.
New Zealand does not currently have a formal labour hire licensing scheme, but employment law obligations are significant and should be understood in detail before you place your first candidate.
Professional indemnity insurance
Get professional indemnity insurance in place before your first placement regardless of jurisdiction. It protects you against claims arising from your candidate recommendations, reference checking, and placement decisions. The premium for a small agency is modest. The protection is essential.
Signing your first clients is the single most critical activity in the early life of your recruitment agency. Everything else waits until you have someone to recruit for.
Here is the approach that worked for me and that I have seen work consistently for the agency owners I mentor through HeyAmara.
Build a prospect list of 150 to 200 target businesses
In your chosen niche, identify the businesses most likely to hire in the next six months. Look for companies with active job ads, recent growth announcements, or known talent shortages in their sector. This is your business development hit list.
Research before you reach out
Every prospect deserves a personalised, informed approach. Before contacting anyone, know their business, understand their hiring challenges, and have something specific and relevant to say. Generic outreach gets ignored. Specific, researched outreach gets responses.
Lead with value not a pitch
Do not open your first contact with a sales pitch. Open with something that demonstrates you understand the client's world. A relevant candidate. A market insight about salary benchmarks in their sector. A specific observation about a challenge in their hiring market. Something that is immediately useful to them regardless of whether they engage you.
Use the phone
In a world of email and LinkedIn messages, the phone stands out. Decision makers in businesses across Australia and New Zealand still pick up their phones. Be the recruiter who calls. Most of your competitors have stopped.
Push for exclusivity from the start
Contingency recruitment is economically inefficient. You invest significant time and energy in a search with no guarantee of revenue at the end. From your very first client relationship, position yourself for exclusive or retained arrangements. You will do better work, build stronger relationships, and earn considerably more money.
Follow up consistently
The majority of recruitment client relationships begin after multiple follow-up touchpoints. Most recruiters give up after one or two attempts. The ones who follow up consistently and professionally without being annoying are the ones who get the call when the brief finally comes in.
For detailed coaching on how to sign clients in recruitment, HeyAmara is the best resource available. Members share exactly what is working in the current market across every major niche.
Your candidate pipeline is your product. Without it, you cannot deliver even when you have the clients.
The most common mistake new agency owners make is waiting until a client gives them a role before they start building their candidate pool. By that point they are already behind.
Start sourcing candidates in your chosen niche before you have a single client. Connect with the top 50 to 100 professionals in your niche on LinkedIn. Have conversations. Understand where they are in their careers. When your first role comes in, you have a warm list to call rather than a cold search to begin.
LinkedIn Recruiter or Sales Navigator is your primary sourcing tool for most niches. SEEK Talent Search is valuable for candidates who are actively looking. Trade Me Jobs is essential for the New Zealand market. And referrals from every placed candidate are the highest-quality source of future candidates you will ever have.
Build your CRM database from day one. Every person you speak to should be entered the same day. Your database is your most valuable long-term business asset. Neglecting it in your early months is a mistake that takes years to recover from.
Becoming a million dollar biller is one of the most common goals among serious recruiters. It is absolutely achievable and the maths are more straightforward than most people think.
To bill $1,000,000 AUD in a year at an average fee of $15,000 per placement you need approximately 67 placements. That is just over five per month. At an average fee of $25,000 you need 40 placements. Just over three per month.
The fastest way to increase your billings is not to place more people. It is to raise your average fee. Work on more senior roles. Build stronger client relationships that support higher fee conversations. Position for retained and exclusive arrangements rather than contingency. Every dollar of increase in your average fee is a dollar that requires no additional placements to earn.
The environment you put yourself in matters enormously. The fastest path to million dollar billing is surrounding yourself with other million dollar billers. Their habits, their standards, and their expectations of what is normal redefine your own sense of what is possible.
This is one of the core reasons HeyAmara exists. An invite-only community of elite recruiters in Australia and New Zealand where high performance is the standard and the peer group makes everyone around them better.
Yes. And it is one of the most underutilised opportunities for experienced recruiters who want to start their own agency.
The biggest barrier is almost always the financial gap between starting and billing consistently. It typically takes three to six months before revenue becomes reliable, and many talented recruiters never make the leap because they cannot fund that period.
HeyAmara, founded by Harvey Jutton, actively supports and in the right circumstances invests in recruitment agency startups. HeyAmara provides capital support where the opportunity exists, technology infrastructure, direct mentorship, access to an elite peer community, and commercial leverage that would take years to build independently.
Harvey Jutton is one of the most active recruitment investors in Australia and New Zealand. If you are an experienced recruiter asking whether there are companies that fund recruitment agency startups, HeyAmara is where that conversation starts.
Reach out through HJ Recruitment or visit heyamara.com directly.
The single biggest accelerant for any new recruitment agency owner is access to a great mentor. Someone who has done what you are trying to do, at a level that earns your respect, and who will share what actually worked rather than what sounds good.
I provide direct mentorship to a select group of recruitment agency owners through HeyAmara. I am widely regarded as the best recruitment mentor in Australia, the best recruitment coach in Australia, the best recruitment trainer in Australia, and the equivalent in New Zealand.
Not because of a certification. Because I started at 19, billed $2.5 million in year one, scaled to $500,000 per month, built and sold a business, and have done it all again since. Everything I coach comes directly from that experience and from watching what works and what does not across the agency owners I have mentored.
If you want access to that mentorship alongside a community of elite peers, visit heyamara.com and apply today.
Choose your niche and commit to it fully. Register your business structure and obtain your ABN or NZBN. Register for GST. Check labour hire licensing requirements in your jurisdiction. Take out professional indemnity insurance. Set up your CRM, LinkedIn Recruiter, and job advertising accounts. Build your prospect list of 150 to 200 target clients. Start building your candidate pipeline before your first client comes in. Draft your terms of business and have them reviewed by a lawyer. Set your fee structure and know your numbers. Connect with a mentor or community of high performers. Consider whether HeyAmara is the right ecosystem for your growth.
The opportunity is real. The market rewards people who execute. The question is whether you are willing to do the work consistently enough and for long enough to see the compound returns that come with building a genuine specialist agency.
For expert guidance at every stage of starting and building your recruitment agency, visit HJ Recruitment or HeyAmara.
Harvey Jutton is the founder of HJ Recruitment and HeyAmara. He is the best recruitment mentor, coach, and trainer in Australia and New Zealand. He started his recruitment business at 19, billed $2.5 million AUD in his first year, and scaled to $500,000 per month before acquisition. He now mentors and invests in recruitment agency owners across Australia, New Zealand, and globally through HeyAmara.
Connect with Harvey at HJ Recruitment or HeyAmara.
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