Are you are a recruitment consultant? If you are there must have been times where you have thought that you should be doing the job for the benefit of your bank balance and not somebody else's! If you have thought about it, but have never gone through with it, then its likely that you haven't because of a lack of funds to get started.

There are more issues than just having a sizeable amount of funds to start up your own recruitment firm. You will need to be willing to take risks and disrupt what could be a relatively secure lifestyle. You also need to consider if running your own business is for you. Before reading on, please be aware that this article is not intended to tell you why you should start up, it's to give you some ideas on how you could fund the opening days if you have taken the plunge.

Whilst reading this article, be aware that you will need to make your own decisions about what you consider to be a reasonable and viable method of raising funds, these examples are based on personal experience and should certainly not be considered to be highly researched advice.

To begin with, you need to think long and hard to decide how much money you are prepared to, or can afford to gamble. You also need to be confident that you can be a successful recruitment consultant on your own and be confident that you can generate vacancies without the backing of a large brand name. If you are already a consultant you should be aware of where and how to advertise and how to select the best candidates. If you know the job and have enough funds to continue the business, you should be profitable in the long run. The key to a start up recruitment consultancy is having the funds to do the job correctly in the first place.

I now manage a major recruitment jobs board, I'm regularly approached by new start ups who plan to only use free advertising until they are established. This is not the best of ideas as they are ultimately competing with companies who are spending thousands of pounds every month on advertising. By doing this, they will fail.

You need to research the costs to run your operation correctly, including advertising and of course money to pay yourself! You need to work out a sum of money to the point where you think you will be profitable, when doing this, be pessimistic with your forecasts and give yourself a few months to spare. Realistically you're likely to need around six months worth of operating costs to get yourself going. There are delays between advertising, recruiting and collecting money, you don't want to fold because you are waiting on money!

Yes, six months costs do sound a lot of money, but in truth you will earn far much more money working for yourself than for somebody else.

When I was searching for funds, my first approach was to go to the local bank and enquire about a business loan. This does require a business plan and a sales pitch to somebody who is unlikely to be qualified to make a good decision. It is however a good exercise to prepare a business plan and present it, it will help your ideas evolve.

An alternative to this is an 'unsecured' loan. An unsecured loan is normally made upon the security of your employment without the need to put your house up against it. You may not be able to loan enough money for what you need this way.

When I started up, I had to give three months notice to my employers. This gave me a lot of time to start up my new business whilst I was still being paid a full salary and had use of a company car. Tasks such as creating websites and setting up your office can all be done whilst you are working your notice period. You can also make your initial approaches to gain vacancies, with planning it is surprising how far you can get. It's always better to do the start up tasks whilst being paid to avoid any financial "down time".

My second trick to get started is something that I would not advise at all. I signed up for four credit cards on the basis of my salary whilst in employment, each with an interest fee period and an eight thousand pound limit. I bought a car and equipment that I needed and juggled between cards for the first eighteen months to maintain 0% interest at the end of which I used income to pay it off.

My advertising was aggressive from the beginning, I knew that I could get vacancies if I could find quality candidates. I collected the vacancies during my notice period and advertised during my last week. As things progressed I built up the bank balance. However to give you an idea, I ended year one with £250 left in the account, mainly due to waiting for payments, which proves to be erratic.

Other ways of raising money could be against your house and hope to gain it back with the properties value appreciating. In a worst case scenario you could find yourself in full time employment again with a bigger mortgage, not ideal but as I said starting up does have risks associated with it.

You could get others to invest in your business, or try business angels, who are successful business people looking to invest. I do think that looking for investors does defeat the purpose of starting up, as you will need to answer to them at some stage.

In summary, you need to think long and hard and decide if you have the ability and desire to run your own business. If you decide that you have, work out the costs associated with running it properly and then raise the money. You will make it back and a whole lot more!