Newly unemployed recruiters could be forgiven for displaying a lack of enthusiasm for job hunting: no-one wants to compete with hundreds of candidates for a handful of vacancies. In many cases they’d rather be running their own business, where they can never get sacked again. But they would be entering a market where in January alone, over 2,000 UK businesses went under. As a start-up they’d run a much higher risk ofbecoming one of these casualties.
So an increasing number are seeing the attractions of a franchise, where they can buy into an established name. As Ian Hetherington, managing director of Career Matters Recruitment, says: “Statistically they are far more likely to succeed with the network behind them than as a stand-alone business.†This is a burgeoning trend. Doug Bugie, chief executive of Antal International’s franchised businesses, says: “We must have 100 leads in the pipeline globally and 50 in the UK; that’s about twice the number we would usually have.â€
John Warren, franchise sales director for Driver Hire Group, says this is a recent development: “If you’d asked me six or seven weeks ago, I would have said we have a volume, but not the quality. Now we have quality enquiries as well.â€