Recruitment growth / Guide 09
How to start a recruitment agency: the complete marketing setup checklist.
The short answer
Starting a recruitment agency takes two setups, and most founders only plan for one. The company setup is the entity, the insurance, the licensing and the bank account, and your accountant will walk you through it. The marketing setup is roughly 58 separate tasks across positioning, website, tracking, directories, reviews, content, ads, and enquiry handling. This is that second list, in order, with time estimates.
Most guides to starting a recruitment agency cover the company: register the entity, sort professional indemnity cover, check whether your state requires a labour hire licence, open a bank account, pick an ATS. That is real work and your accountant and lawyer handle most of it.
Then you have clients to win and candidates to reach, and there is a second list nobody hands you.
This is that list. It is the marketing and digital setup for a new recruitment agency in Australia, in dependency order, with our estimate of the time each item takes and whether it is a one-off or a permanent commitment.
There are 58 items. It runs to the true count, boring ones included. Read it and decide what you want to do with your first 90 days.
How to use this
Three things before you start.
The order matters more than the list. Several items block others. Positioning blocks the website, the website blocks tracking, tracking blocks ads. Doing them out of sequence means doing several of them twice.
Not all 58 are urgent. 12 of them matter in month one and they are marked. The rest can wait, and a founder who tries to do everything in week one usually stops billing, which is the one thing a new agency cannot afford.
No money figures here. Costs vary enormously by state, by tooling choice and by whether you do the work yourself, and we would rather give you no number than an invented one. Time estimates are our own, from doing this work, and they assume you are learning as you go.
Phase 0: decide before you build anything
Five decisions. Everything downstream inherits them, and changing them later means rebuilding.
| # | Task | Type | Est. time | Month one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Choose the specialisation you want to be known for: market, roles, geography | One-off | 2–5 hours of thinking, more of arguing | ✓ |
| 2 | Write the one sentence that says what you do and for whom | One-off | 1–3 hours | ✓ |
| 3 | Choose a business name that is searchable and not already ranking for someone else | One-off | 2–4 hours including checks | |
| 4 | Secure the domain, and check the name against existing trade marks and social handles | One-off | 1–2 hours | ✓ |
| 5 | Decide which side you lead with — employers or candidates — and accept that it shapes every page | One-off | 1 hour |
Item 1 is the one founders skip, and it is the one that costs the most. “We recruit across a range of industries” gives a stranger no reason to call you and gives search engines nothing to rank you for. Existing clients already know you and rarely read the website, so naming a market costs nothing with them.
Phase 1: the foundations
The website and the plumbing behind it. Everything measurable depends on this phase being right.
| # | Task | Type | Est. time | Month one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | Set up business email on your own domain | One-off | 1 hour | |
| 7 | Build the website: home, about, employers, candidates, roles, contact | One-off | 2–6 weeks | ✓ |
| 8 | Write the employer page — what you specialise in and the proof | One-off | 3–6 hours | ✓ |
| 9 | Write the candidate page — what working with you is like | One-off | 2–4 hours | |
| 10 | Set up the roles/jobs section and decide how vacancies get published | One-off | 3–8 hours | |
| 11 | Add a privacy policy and collection statement covering candidate data | One-off | 2–4 hours, legal review advised | |
| 12 | Make the site fast and usable on a phone | One-off | 2–6 hours | |
| 13 | Install Google Analytics 4 | One-off | 1–2 hours | ✓ |
| 14 | Verify Google Search Console and submit a sitemap | One-off | 1 hour | ✓ |
| 15 | Define conversion events: employer enquiry, candidate application, phone click | One-off | 2–4 hours | ✓ |
| 16 | Connect the website enquiry form to your CRM or ATS | One-off | 2–8 hours | |
| 17 | Set up call tracking, or at minimum a click-to-call event | One-off | 1–3 hours | |
| 18 | Add basic schema markup: organisation, website, job postings | One-off | 2–4 hours |
Item 15 is the one that gets skipped and then costs you six months of unusable data. If you cannot tell an employer enquiry from a candidate application in your analytics, nothing later in this list can be measured, and you will end up judging your marketing by whichever number is largest, which will always be candidate traffic.
Item 18 matters more than it used to. Structured data is how search engines and AI assistants work out what your business is without guessing.
Phase 2: being findable
Nobody knows you exist. This phase fixes the mechanical part of that.
| # | Task | Type | Est. time | Month one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 | Create and verify a Google Business Profile | One-off | 1–2 hours plus verification wait | ✓ |
| 20 | Complete every field on it: hours, services, description, photos | One-off | 2 hours | |
| 21 | Create a Bing Places listing | One-off | 30 minutes | |
| 22 | Create an Apple Business listing (the platform formerly called Business Connect) | One-off | 30 minutes | |
| 23 | Create the LinkedIn company page | One-off | 1–2 hours | ✓ |
| 24 | Claim or create profiles on the main Australian business directories | One-off | 2–4 hours | |
| 25 | List with your local chamber of commerce or business network | One-off | 1 hour | |
| 26 | Consider RCSA membership, the industry peak body, and its member listing | One-off | Application dependent | |
| 27 | Set up your Seek employer presence if you will advertise roles there | One-off | 1–2 hours | |
| 28 | Set up an Indeed company page | One-off | 1 hour | |
| 29 | Claim your Glassdoor profile before someone reviews you on it | One-off | 30 minutes | |
| 30 | Make sure name, address and phone number match exactly everywhere | Ongoing | 1 hour, then vigilance |
Item 30 looks minor and matters more than most items on this list. Inconsistent business details across listings are one of the most common and most quietly damaging local search problems, and they get harder to fix the more listings exist.
Item 29 is worth doing early for the same reason you register a domain early — claim the name before someone else defines it for you.
Phase 3: proof
You have no track record under this name. This phase is about borrowing credibility until you have your own, and it doubles as the employer brand candidates and reviewers will judge you on before they ever speak to a consultant.
| # | Task | Type | Est. time | Month one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 | Rewrite your own LinkedIn profile to sell the new business, not the old job | One-off | 2 hours | |
| 32 | Get your first testimonials from clients and candidates you placed previously | One-off | 3–5 hours of asking | |
| 33 | Build a review-request habit: who asks, when, on which platform | Ongoing | 1 hour to set up, minutes per placement | |
| 34 | Publish your first case study, anonymised if necessary | One-off | 3–4 hours | |
| 35 | Write the founder story — why this agency exists | One-off | 2–3 hours | |
| 36 | Get professional photography, or at minimum a decent headshot | One-off | Half a day | |
| 37 | Decide what performance data you are willing to publish and start counting it now | Ongoing | 1 hour to decide, ongoing to maintain | |
| 38 | Set up a simple way to collect and store client permission to name them | Ongoing | 1 hour |
Item 37 is the sleeper. Time to fill, offer-accept rate and 12-month retention are the numbers employers actually want and almost no agency publishes. You cannot publish them in year three if you did not start counting in month one.
Item 38 saves a genuine headache later. Every case study needs permission, and chasing it retrospectively is much harder than asking at the time.
Phase 4: demand
Now you create demand. Founders often reach this phase late, so give it a defined budget, owner and measurement window.
| # | Task | Type | Est. time | Month one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 39 | Research what employers and candidates in your specialisation actually search | One-off, refreshed annually | 4–8 hours | |
| 40 | Map those searches to pages and decide what to build | One-off | 3–4 hours | |
| 41 | Write the salary and market-rate guide for your specialisation | Annual | 15–30 hours the first time | |
| 42 | Write the five questions clients ask you in first meetings, as five pages | One-off | 10–20 hours | |
| 43 | Set a publishing rhythm you can actually sustain | Ongoing | 4–10 hours a month, forever | |
| 44 | Optimise page titles, descriptions and headings across the site | One-off, then ongoing | 3–5 hours | |
| 45 | Put a direct answer in the first 60 words of every important page | One-off | 2–4 hours | |
| 46 | Build internal links between related pages | Ongoing | 1 hour a month | |
| 47 | Set up Google Ads: account structure, conversion import, negative keywords | One-off | 6–12 hours | |
| 48 | Set up Meta ads and the pixel, if candidate attraction needs it | One-off | 4–8 hours | |
| 49 | Manage the ad accounts: budget, bids, search terms, creative | Ongoing | 2–5 hours a week | |
| 50 | Set up email capture and a candidate or client newsletter | Ongoing | 4 hours to set up, 2–4 hours a month | |
| 51 | Choose the one or two social channels your market actually uses, and ignore the rest | Ongoing | 2–5 hours a week |
Item 41 is the highest-value single asset in recruitment marketing and the reason is simple: it is the thing employers research before they brief anyone, and producing it credibly proves you know the market. It is also 15 to 30 hours of work the first time, which is why most agencies do not have a current one.
Item 49 is the line item people underestimate most. Ad accounts are not a setup task. They are a weekly commitment for as long as they run, and an unmanaged account quietly spends money on the wrong searches.
Phase 5: what happens when someone actually enquires
The cheapest wins in this entire list, and the most commonly neglected.
| # | Task | Type | Est. time | Month one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 52 | Decide and document what happens in the first five minutes after an enquiry | One-off | 2 hours | ✓ |
| 53 | Set up out-of-hours handling: a clear acknowledgement, follow-up automation or an honest response-time expectation | One-off | 2–6 hours | |
| 54 | Write the enquiry acknowledgement and the follow-up sequence | One-off | 3–4 hours | |
| 55 | Build the qualifying questions into the form without making it a wall | One-off | 2 hours | |
| 56 | Test the whole path yourself, as a stranger, once a quarter | Ongoing | 1 hour quarterly |
Item 56 catches more revenue leaks than any analytics tool. Submit your own form. See what arrives, how fast, and whether anything follows.
Phase 6: knowing whether any of it worked
| # | Task | Type | Est. time | Month one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 57 | Decide the one number the business is judged on, and agree it before traffic arrives | One-off | 1 hour | ✓ |
| 58 | Build a monthly review: enquiries by source and type, not sessions | Ongoing | 2–3 hours a month |
Item 57 sounds like a formality and prevents the most common failure in this whole list. For a recruitment agency the number is qualified employer conversations booked. Agree it in month one, because in month five somebody will point at a session count and draw the wrong conclusion from it.
The honest total
58 items. 46 of them are one-off. 11 are ongoing commitments that do not end, and one is an annual rebuild.
Our estimate for the first 90 days, doing it yourself and learning as you go: 150 to 250 hours. That is roughly two to three full working weeks spread across three months, and it lands in exactly the period when you also need to be winning your first clients and making your first placements.
After that, the ongoing load settles at something like 20 to 40 hours a month to keep content publishing, ads managed, reviews coming, and the numbers reviewed. That does not go away. It is the price of demand you own rather than rent.
Those are estimates from doing this work, not measured figures, and they will vary with how much you already know.
So should you do this yourself?
Three routes. All three are legitimate and the right answer depends on what your time is worth right now.
Do it yourself. Costs money only for tools. Costs 150 to 250 hours in the quarter when your billing habits are being formed, and you will make beginner mistakes on tracking and ads that take months to surface. Sensible if you have runway, patience, and genuine interest. Many good agencies started this way.
Hire someone. A full-time marketing person is a salary plus on-costs before they produce anything, and a new agency usually cannot justify one. The junior you can afford will not have the market knowledge to write a credible salary guide or the seniority to argue with you about positioning. This is the route that most often disappoints: junior salaries buy junior judgement, and positioning needs the senior kind.
Buy it as a service. You pay for it and get your hours back, which matters most in the first year when your billing time is the business. The genuine downside is that you learn less about your own marketing, and if you choose badly you will pay for activity rather than outcomes. Ask any provider what number they are accountable for and how it gets measured before you sign anything.
We do the third one. Multiply builds the positioning, website, search presence, and enquiry handling for new businesses, and we did exactly this for AI Talent on Demand, a founder-led AI and technology recruitment specialist, from launch. Over four months of SEO work, monthly organic clicks went from 22 to 557, a 25× increase, with more than 500 keywords on page one as at August 2026. Those are Google Search Console visibility figures rather than placement or revenue results, and the site launched in November 2025 with the SEO programme starting in March 2026, so the multiples run from a small base. If that is the route you want, we set it up for new businesses.
If it is not, the list above is complete and in order. Work through it.
Once you are running and the plateau arrives, the next problem is different and we have written that up separately in how to grow a recruitment agency.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to start a recruitment agency in Australia?
It varies too widely for a single figure to be useful, because the entity setup, insurance, licensing, ATS choice and marketing spend all move independently. The more useful planning number is time: our estimate is 150 to 250 hours of marketing setup in the first 90 days if you do it yourself, on top of company formation and your billing work.
Do you need a licence to start a recruitment agency in Australia?
It depends on your state and on the type of work you place. Labour hire licensing applies in several jurisdictions and the rules differ between them. Check with the relevant state regulator, because this is a legal question rather than a marketing one and the requirements change.
Do you need experience to start a recruitment agency?
Not formally, but the market is unforgiving of people who do not know it. The agencies that establish quickly are almost always founded by someone with a client book and genuine specialist knowledge, because both shorten the period before the first placement. Everything in the checklist above is easier when you already know what your buyers care about.
What should a new recruitment agency do first?
The 12 items marked for month one: decide the specialisation (1), write the positioning sentence (2), secure the domain (4), build the website (7) and its employer page (8), install Google Analytics (13) and Search Console (14), define your conversion events (15), claim your Google Business Profile (19) and LinkedIn company page (23), document what happens in the first five minutes after an enquiry (52), and agree the one number the business is judged on (57). The other 46 can wait.
How long before marketing produces enquiries for a new recruitment agency?
Paid search can produce enquiries within weeks if the tracking is right and the budget is real. Organic and AI search take longer, but less than the standard year-long advice. On the launch account behind this checklist, the first client enquiries from SEO and from AI citations and Overviews arrived within three months of the programme starting. Treat three months as the earliest realistic point, and give the channel two quarters before judging it.