You don't need a licence to operate as either a recruitment consultant, or to operate a recruitment company. It's essentially a sales company and it has no regulation or oversight.
With regards to setting up yet another IT recruitment agency in this country, there is a fantastic opportunity to do so as it is very very easy to provide a differentiation between the new company and any of the multitude that are out there.
Simply stated, if you say you're going to provide a service to recruiters and candidates, and if you actually do what you say you're going to do, you're immediately differentiating yourself from the rest.
I have now worked worked on all sides of this triangle - the candidate, the recruitment company, and now as a recruiter in a large organisation.
I've experienced the rubbish service that such companies dole out to candidates - fair enough, the candidates don't pay any more to the recruitment company.
But now, I'm amazed to experience exactly the same kind of shoddy service being handed out to my company by these same people - and we are paying them money. It's hard to believe that so many of these companys all operate in the same shoddy and unprofessional manner.
As an example, we had an issue with a recruitment company, and called in their MD to discuss - basically, do you actually want our business or not. We got all the platitudes in the world and were assured that we'd get their best people working for us. He took away a listing of 15 jobs that needed to be filled, and for a month, we received no CVs. We contacted them again, asked what was going on, and the MD was busy, but someone would be over to see us. A spotty kid showed up (nothing wrong with that) to start to give us the same story we'd received already. This kid had no idea what was going on, and when asked, freeily admitted to only have been working in the company for 2 weeks. So much for the "best people".
So, differentiation in this market should be extremely easy. A proper service focused IT recruitment company, who fulfill all promises, and keep their word. It sounds so simple. Well, then why doesn't anyone else do it?