Why recruiting is hard

When you're a solo 1099, you don't have to do any recruiting. You just have to find projects for yourself.

When you try to grow a government contracting business, you will have to recruit people. It's tough! It's particularly tough in the early stages. Here's why:

• You don't have recruiting processes in place. You are probably reliant on your personal network, which will run out eventually
• It takes a lot of time. Reading resumes, meeting people, interviewing them, making sure they're not BS'ers, takes up hours and hours every week if you're regularly hiring people. If you have a full time 1099 gig, you're doing this after hours.
• You have to let the prime vet them. You are likely sub-contracting to start which means the prime gets to interview them and approve. It slows thing down and it's annoying, particularly if they have a different view of the candidate
• Timing is always tricky. Since you don't have a prime contract, you don't always have positions to fill and candidates to hire at the same time. This means you have to be building a pool of candidates and maintain the relationship with them until a spot opens up for them.
• Recruiters are expensive. I haven't tried a recruiter, but if they are commission based, they might take 25% of the presumed salary, which could be your entire margin for the year. If they are hourly, you might be getting billed for time that doesn't yield any good candidates.

Going from a solo biz to a business with employees is just a different job entirely that you have to do on top of your day gig. I'm not saying it's not worth it, but you must know what you're getting into.

Want the full playbook? Check out Going 1099.