After eleven years of recruiting Australia’s best Recruitment Consultants, I’ve had the luxury of “hearing it from all angles”.
I’ve had hundreds of Recruiters come to me from multi-national agencies looking for a career move. These are the five main reasons they’ve enjoyed and relished the move to a boutique agency.
- Better Remuneration Models
Generally speaking, boutiques are able to pay better base salaries and higher commissions. They tend to have lower and leaner levels of management which means less “non billing Managers”. It takes less money to stoke the machine. This ultimately leads to higher bases and better commission structures.
- Less Micro-Management / More Autonomy
Boutique agencies are able to provide less micro-management and more autonomy to their Consultants. There are without doubt some exceptions to this rule, however the general rule is that a lot of Consultants cut their teeth at multi-nationals where the strict KPIs are an inflexible part of the business model and then move to boutiques once they know the formula.
- Less “Brand Damage”
Over the years I’ve interviewed dozens of Consultants leaving multi-nationals who have told me about the difficulties of doing BD due to the “brand damage” their business has in the market.
By this I’m referring to the number of Consultants some of these businesses have churned through and the impact that has on long-term relationships with clients.
- Less “Desk Splitting”
If you’ve done a lot of hard work building a desk, you don’t want half of it carved off for a new Consultant who is joining your team.
One of the multi-nationals has built their business by slicing and dicing desks once they are consistently billing. This can be done either alphabetically or geographically – either way it’s annoying if you’ve done all the hard work building it up.
- More “Fluidity” and Market Adaptation
One of the advantages of a boutique is that they are nimble and can adapt quickly to market trends and demands. There is less red tape and decisions can be made quickly rather than having to go through the Management channels. Your (realistic) client demands can be met quickly without breaking the business model.
What’s your experience? Have you moved from a multi-national to a boutique or vice versa? How have you found it?
I’m very interested in your thoughts.
