Business grant

nino1

I have a recruitment company (20 months old) with one employee.
Is there anywhere I can go to get a grant to take the company
to the next level. With a cash injection I would be able to employ new
staff so was wondering if there are any employment grants or general
enterprise grants out there for a company in my position?

YouBuyLocal

There is a FÁS scheme whereby if you are employing at least one person you can take on another staff member who can keep drawing his/her dole.

http://fas.ie/en/Allowances+and+Grants/default.htm

http://www.fas.ie/en/WPP/Provider.htm

DubTony

nino1, surely if you're doing enough business you should be taking on somebody without any kind of aid. If you're not doing enough business you'd hardly need that extra person. What I'm saying is that it seems illogical to take on somebody in the hope that they'll somehow increase business. I would expect that in a small operation like yours, you'd be the driving force and that you would be the person responsible for bringing business in.

Am I way off the mark here?

Tangled

There are business development grants, employment grants and loads of other supports offered by county enterprise boards - I have no idea if they support recruitment businesses or not but it would be my first port of call and they will direct you to the right agency if they can't help you.

nipper banks

Tangled wrote: »

There are business development grants, employment grants and loads of other supports offered by county enterprise boards - I have no idea if they support recruitment businesses or not but it would be my first port of call and they will direct you to the right agency if they can't help you.

This is good advice. The County Enterprise boards are very good at supporting small companies (once you get over something like 10 employees you can go to Enterprise Ireland). The Governments Jobs Inititive to be announced tomorrow (10/5/2011) will probably include things like supporting taking on an intern, which might be worth considering. Otherwise don't hold your breath as the rest of the Jobs Inititive looks to be disappointing.

onedmc

DubTony wrote: »

nino1, surely if you're doing enough business you should be taking on somebody without any kind of aid....

Am I way off the mark here?

I kinda agree with Tony for a couple of reasons.

Recruitment is a mature market so if you get a grant you will be putting the other recruiters at a disadvantage as well as possibly stealing their staff.

Secondly recruitment is a great business for organic growth, you can build it up yourself then hire and train junior staff at a low cost with big bonuses.

You really only need big money when you want to hire the big hitters, and you need big money because 3 out of 4 big hitters wont pay their way.

But dont let this stop you applying for Grants, lots of recruiters have got grants for things like international expansion or should I say new web sites, seems to be the same thing.