Sell, Buy or Value a Recruitment Agency
Welcome to Recruitment Agency Sales, specialist business brokers for the UK recruitment industry, with over 25 years’ experience of mergers & acquisitions. We help recruitment agency owners value, prepare and sell their businesses, and introduce established recruitment companies to suitable buyers. Our team combines extensive recruitment-sector experience with specialist business brokerage and M&A expertise. Contact us today for a confidential discussion about your agency.
Recruitment Agency Sales
Thinking about selling your recruitment business?
We provide a confidential service specifically for recruitment agency owners. We prepare an anonymous sales profile, market your business to suitable registered buyers and manage introductions through to negotiation and completion.
Under our model there is no introduction or success fee payable by the seller.
Recruitment Agency Valuations
What Is Your Recruitment Agency Worth?
We provide market valuations and exit strategies. Recruitment agency valuations require more than applying a generic multiple to profit. We consider adjusted EBITDA, net fee income, permanent and temporary recruitment activity, client concentration, management structure, owner dependence, recurring revenue, contractor numbers, growth trends and current buyer demand.
Recruitment Agency Acquisitions
Looking to acquire an established recruitment business?
We maintain a database of buyers ranging from individual recruitment professionals and management teams through to existing recruitment groups, investors and trade purchasers. Register with us to receive details of suitable opportunities as they become available.
Why Choose Recruitment Agency Sales?
Recruitment sector experience
We understand permanent, temporary, contract and executive recruitment businesses and the different factors buyers consider when assessing them.
Specialist buyer database
We maintain contact with individuals, recruitment companies, investors and strategic buyers actively looking for recruitment-sector acquisitions.
No seller success fee
Under our model, sellers do not pay us an introduction or completion fee.
Practical deal experience
We assist with buyer introductions, negotiations and deal structures while working alongside the parties’ accountants, solicitors and other professional advisers.
How We Sell Recruitment Agencies
A confidential, structured process designed to introduce your recruitment agency to suitable buyers and help move the transaction from initial discussion to completion.
Confidential Discussion
Tell us about your recruitment agency, your objectives and your preferred timescale.
Assessment and Valuation
We discuss likely market value, saleability and any issues that could affect a transaction.
Prepare the Business for Market
We prepare an anonymous profile highlighting the key commercial features of the agency without identifying it publicly.
Approach Suitable Buyers
We market the opportunity to registered and carefully selected buyers who may have a genuine interest in the business.
Introductions and Negotiations
Interested buyers receive further information subject to confidentiality requirements. We coordinate enquiries, meetings and offers.
Heads of Terms to Completion
Once terms are agreed, solicitors and accountants undertake the formal legal, financial and tax work. We remain involved to help keep the transaction moving.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. You don’t need any sector experience at all to run or own a recruitment agency. If you are doing permanent work only then this may not be too much concern, but if your company does temporary too then it will make things a bit more complicated. There is nothing to stop you owning it, but you will need plenty of experience to keep a temporary desk going – its high stress level work.
For a further discussion on this, please get in touch with us and we would be happy to talk through what you need to do, as well as give you recommendations as to how to do it.
If you are seller, we do not charge any fees, unless you require our premium services including valuations.
Buyers only pay us a fee if they conclude a deal with a seller. We agree what this fee will be at the outset – it is a fixed fee, not a percentage.
For sellers there are no hidden fees, exit penalties or advertising costs. We are an ethical broker and we want to be different to the majority of brokers out there who frontload their fees to sellers and do very little to market businesses out to buyers.
Quite simply – the staff. Without the staff, your recruitment agency is probably close to worthless, unless you have strong evidence of ongoing work and good contracts. So next time you think about firing someone for not achieving their monthly target, take a breath and think it through.
Recruitment consultants with provable billing records and a history of maintaining and building strong connections add immense saleability to your recruitment agency.
There are a few reasons for interest in buying recruitment agencies – some of which you may not realise!
- Expansion – other agencies in similar sectors looking to expand their reach, whether geographically or simply to increase the size of their order books.
- New sectors – it is incredibly difficult to decide to set up in a completely new sector and a lot easier to purchase a business already operating and known for its work in an area – an example of this is legal recruitment.
- Financial issues – if a company has financial issues with substantial debts, they may look to acquire a fresh business and then move forward with that and allow the existing company to go to the wall. This is probably more common than you would imagine.
- Step up the ladder – we get parents of recruitment consultants looking to acquire an employment agency to give their children a leg up with their career.
- Skip the first 5 years of start up – lets face it we’ve all been there. You set up a business, its very exciting etc. but how many years does it take to actually give you a regular income? Much easier to acquire an existing agency with clients and staff.
- Other companies moving into recruitment – we hear this all the time in all sectors – ‘surely it can’t be that hard to do recruitment/accountancy/law/surveying etc.. I’ll set up myself and prove it can be done. After all, recruitment consultants just send out CVs and get paid a load of money.’ Obviously these types of buyers can be a good option, regardless of the shock they get when they realise how difficult recruitment consultancy can be!
- Its a good business – you may not realise it, but there are some very attractive recruitment agencies out there for buyers to acquire – yours may well be one of them. Contact us today for a chat.
A Business with a Social Purpose
Recruitment Agency Sales is part of the Ten Percent Group.
The group has a longstanding commitment to donating 10% of annual net profits to charity, with donations distributed through the Ten Percent Foundation to charities and community organisations.
Thinking About Selling Your Recruitment Agency?
Whether you are ready to sell now or simply want to understand your options, we are happy to have an initial confidential discussion. There is no obligation to put your business on the market.