QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

A licence holder gets everything an AES in-house Recruitment Consultant would expect from day one.

AES will provide you with all the training, software systems, techniques and support to operate your recruitment business from your home / office including:

• 5 Day (ideally longer if the licence holder can spare the time) initial training at Head Office – Worcester.
• Ongoing support training – you can work at our Head Office for as long as you need to become accomplished. If you can spend two to three weeks in our office initially you will pick up the systems and processes much quicker.
• Access to AES’s database of companies and candidates.
• Use of integrated project management software.
• Technical support on database software.
• Support and advice at each stage of your projects.
• Software database user licence.
• AES e-mail account
• An easy to use ‘VoIP’ internet phone system and headset; We use Swyx
• Daily contact with head office by phone / e-mail
• Web site job advertising on a recognised UK job board.
• Web site CV search facility on a recognised UK site.
• Daily administration support to put CV applicants onto the central system.
• Invoice generation
• Invoice / debt collection support.

Ideally you should have a proven ability to communicate effectively with customers and if you know the difference between features and benefits that is a big plus point. Your background might be:

• Recruitment
• Sales.
• Customer or Account Management.
• Human Resources
• Management Consultancy.

You will also need:

• Home / office facility with suitable PC, internet link, printer, telephone, etc.
• The desire and commitment to meet self imposed targets (it is difficult to work from home without this ability).

No. In the eyes of the customer you will be representing AES and be using our name – if you make a sale or an agreement with the customer it is as an AES representative.

Once you are making sales (or even earlier) you will need to set up a Limited company so that you can invoice AES and process any other costs you are incurring. This can be done quite quickly but it is advisable to consult with your Accountant on the best way forward.

Once you have successfully made an introduction to a customer you will instruct AES to invoice the customer and chase the money. You will then send AES an invoice from your own limited company and this will be paid when any obligations to the customer have been met.

Like every business there are overheads to be paid and this is no different. In normal circumstances you could expect to incur costs in printing, advertising and the purchase of equipment/tools/software licences and this is before you start generating business. You might even have premises costs to consider.

With AES and assuming you have a computer, access to the internet/telephone and a printer, the only costs you should incur are;

• Postage if you decide to write to customers.
• If you are opting for Option 1, you will need to provide £4,000 up front for the first 4 months and then £1,000 per month thereafter.
• If you are opting for Option 2, you will not be required to pay any upfront costs however you will incur a monthly fixed fee of £1,250 plus VAT.

The AES licence fee covers all the software licences, internet web site access AES purchases on behalf of a licence holder and the additional services mentioned in Answer 2 above.

No, you pay £4,000 on day one and this covers the first 4 months (ideally at the 3 to 4 month point you should be receiving income from your sales effort) and then it is £1,000 per month.

There are 3.5 million UK Limited companies and every one of them require key permanent employees to maintain their business plans. Even when things are relatively static and a company has no growth plans they could lose people through retirement, pregnancy, health, relocation, ambition and redundancy. Replacing people is difficult and expensive, especially skilled people; the area that AES specialises in.

We live in uncertain times and this can present a difficult economic environment. We do though have a UK skills shortage, a record number of people in employment and over a half a million vacancies advertised in the UK currently. These are the conditions which should allow a specialist recruitment consultancy to benefit.

This is the difficult one. As a guide AES uses a simple marketing principal:

Find 10 to 12 good companies, employing between 30 and 150 people (there are 88,000 of these in the UK and AES has access to all of their details) and speak to the Senior Decision-maker. Once the relationship is developed and credibility established, fill 2 to 3 jobs with them per annum. This would mean you were managing just a few companies and could be filling over 24 jobs per annum. If you make £5000 per sale (not an untypical figure) you would be on a reasonable income (around £120,000) working sensible hours and at home! A home-based recruitment consultant keeps all of this less the licence fee.

We have had a licence holder who opted just to do a few hours a week producing only a few sales per year just so they could stay at home and earn enough to pay their children’s school fees. This is a venture that you can mould around your own priorities.

You will have complete freedom to operate in any sectors that you want. At AES we believe in managing customers and not managing industries. If you have a developed relationship with a Managing Director (many home-based recruiters join AES with several established leads already) and they trust you to help in other sectors, areas or disciplines that is to be encouraged. Recruitment is common sense and you encounter the same issues/problems whether you are recruiting a Director for a bank or a Salesman for a medical company and they are:

• Where would the person be now?
• How do we get them to apply to the role?
• What can we offer them to take the job?

This is not a Franchise but it is like a Franchise.

AES will grant a licence holder permission to use AES’s system and to operate as an AES representative. As such a licence holder will be trained and supported to use the processes and techniques in exactly the same way as all of the other users on the AES system that has been perfected over 25 years of successfully trading in the UK.

Unlike a Franchise there are no Geographical or business sector restrictions on where a Home-based recruitment consultant can do business – just go out and develop business. The only restraint that is imposed is (and this is common sense) AES recruitment consultants do not approach customers where other AES Recruitment Consultants are currently (in the last 3 months) trying to do business with or have made a sale with the company in the past.

You sign up for 6 months and thereafter it is ongoing – if you are not prepared to give a new business venture at least 6 months you should not do it!

Your notice period is 90 days and if you decide to leave at the 6 month point this notice must be given 90 days before the end of the initial 6 month period.