FINANCE
HOW TO RECOVER FROM PAST
DUE RECRUITING DEBT
BY: STAFF WRITERS
When it comes to debt, it can feel like a deep dark hole
that you cannot climb out of. It is worse when you are in
debt due to someone else not paying their part in time.
As a recruitment company, you are extending a service
to companies and they pay you for finding them highly
skilled employees. So, what happens when a company
does not pay you in time? You end up with past due
recruiting debt. Essentially, this is a debt you incur when
a client does not pay you on the agreed upon day. At first,
you may think this is not a huge deal, but it can quickly
spiral into a serious problem for your company. Every
employee needs to be paid and in order to pay them you
have to be paid by your clients. It is a circle of money
that cannot handle being broken by late payments from
a client. Unfortunately, any company is susceptible to
falling into this kind of debt and you need to be prepared
to handle it.
One of the best ways to recover from past due recruiting
debt is to have a collection specialist on staff. They should
be in charge of collections and making sure that all of
your clients pay you on time; this also means that they
will take control in situations where you have not been
paid and action has to be taken against a company in or-
der to get that money. This is a preventative measure that
will keep you from ever falling into recruiting debt, but
you cannot always fight this problem on the front end.
Recovering from debt is hard, especially when it is not
your fault. The first step you need to take is setting any
legal processes in motion to collect what you are owed.
This may be a lengthy battle, so you should get that start-
ed as soon as possible. Once you do this, leave that worry
to the legal experts and move on to what you do best:
recruiting. You need to work on finding money from
somewhere else to fill that debt and the best way to do
that is to find more clients and start making more money.
Growing your business can be hard, but it is necessary
when trying to recover from past due recruiting debt.
Take a look at your current group of clients: are you tar-
geting a specific industry or looking to cover a variety? If
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you are dedicated to one industry, then you should make
sure that you dominate all other staffing agencies in-
volved in that field. If there is even one business that you
have not signed as a client, then go after it! For those of
you staffing in multiple industries, see if there are other
opportunities that you may not have taken advantage of
yet. Is there a new group of companies moving into your
area? Tap into any resource you can find and try to build
up your client base. The clients that are your source of
revenue, so make sure you are making as much money as
you possibly can.
The second part of this equation is who you choose to
staff your clients with. The pool of employees you send to
your clients are the money makers for your company, so
you should be constantly looking for new people. Think
of yourself as a talent scout and you are looking for the
new stars of each field. You should have your recruiters
looking at new graduates, experienced workers, and
everyone in between. We are in one of the hottest peri-
ods of the job market which means that there are a lot of
people moving around and you need to entice them to be
recruited through your agency. In the end, your clients
are paying for you to present the best workers in their
field. If you live up to your end of the deal and place top
matches with your clients, your reputation will go up and
more companies will want to enter contracts with you.
Every deal you make as a company has a circular effect.
We see this when you are trying to recover from past due
recruiting debt and your entire company feels the loss
of money; we also see this when you are sending good
matches to your clients and you start signing more con-
tracts. The cycle will keep moving and you have to make
sure that you are prepared when an issue sends your
company into debt. Rely on your collections specialist
and legal team to collect the debt and use the rest of your
team to find new clients and resources to make up the
difference. If you take all of these steps, then not only will
you recover from past due recruiting debt, but you will
be making more money than before.
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