Smart50 rank: 1
Revenue: $12,762,094
Growth: 428.16%
Founders: Larissa Robertson, 30
Head Office: New South Wales
Employees: 16
Industry: Recruitment
Website: www.scorecruitment.com.au
Larissa Robertson is mature for a 30-year-old. She understands how important it is to keep calm through the vagaries that come with running a fast-growing business.
She has stayed calm through a litany of disasters – liquidation, mounting losses and problems with business partners.
She says her level head and ability to not alarm staff are some of the key features that helped her take labour hire and recruitment agency SCO Recruitment from liquidation to revenue of $12.7 million in 2010-11, to average annual growth rate of 428.16% during the past three years and to top spot on the Smart50 list of Australia’s fastest-growing SMEs.
Robertson’s journey started when she was working at a struggling not-for-profit called Spectrum Employment Services that went into liquidation in May 2009. It was at the height of the GFC and recruitment companies were in huge trouble.
“I read that over 30% of recruitment agencies were wiped out through the GFC as private and public companies downsized their casual workforces,” she says.
“The business was poorly managed but had some very great employees and some very good clients.
“It was focused on local government and had good corporate and government clients. I’m an accountant and could see that the numbers were there to make it work.”
She made a bid for the assets of SES on May 22, 2009 and started trading six days later with 180 staff and $60,000 in the bank.
She spent the next week frantically getting ready to start trading and two weeks into that she learnt she was pregnant. Soon after that a $3 million client pulled out of the business.
“It was a hard couple of months but I learnt that if there is a will there is a way,” she says.
Then she faced her second big challenge. She had started two companies in May 2009, SCO Recruitment and the not for profit Spectrum Community Focus.
"We had been operating for five months and our combined monthly accounts showed that we were making a combined profit,” she says.
But on further reviewing the accounts she found she had lost $300,000 between both entities and the companies were in trouble, and her partners didn't see eye to eye on the accounts.
“I had to pay them out and handle it myself,” she says.
“I stayed calm, reviewed the figures carefully and made the decision to restructure so we could turn a profit the next month, which we did.”
Seven months later she says initial losses were recovered and by the end of 2011 both entities were profitable.
So how did she handle this difficult time with her staff? She didn't try to hide the facts.
“I was honest about the business being in trouble,” she says. “I let the team know that even though it was worrying I had a clear plan and was confident we would come through.”
Her next big move is to open virtual offices in Adelaide, Melbourne and Tasmania, and she wants them profitable in six months.
She says companies have been starting to increase their casual workforces in the past six months and she is hoping that levels will reach pre GFC level by 18 months.
She has dealt with the difficult economy by screwing down costs and increasing her spend on marketing, and she has made SmartCompany and Startup Smart mandatory reading for all managers.
“Great ideas can come from any one business, so we have an open format where anyone can and is encouraged to approach management and the board with ideas,” she says.
In 2010 Robertson won the second place in the StartupSmart Start-Up awards and says that has enabled her to make great contacts with other entrepreneurs.
“I get so many ideas I can apply to my business,” she says.
