Leadership key to recruitment success
Tim Evans - Leadership is key
Catalyst and The Recruiter magazine have launched the 2010 Recruitment Fast 50.
The league table, which identifies the fastest growing privately owned recruitment businesses in the UK, clearly demonstrates that strong leadership and high quality consultants are the key to success in what remains a challenging market place.
"It has been a long held belief in the industry that sector specialisation or geographical location has been the driving force behind growth" said Tim Evans, Director at Catalyst and author of the report. "However it is those organisations that benefit from inspirational leadership and motivated employees that have really continued to prosper in the downturn", he continued.
The quality of consultants was a major factor in driving growth. A clear example of the benefit of this is that of Aston Carter who has grown its turnover from to over £100 million within ten years. A strong business model which focuses on development and reward of staff has meant that Aston Carter have been able to retain high quality consultants who have developed into experts in their sector thereby providing a high class service to their clients.
A notable feature of the list this year is the decline in companies that have attributed their growth to mergers and acquisitions. Only one recruitment business included in the Fast 50 has undertaken any M&A activity, Five Ten Group, although this has put them at number position in the table.
This survey is a snapshot in time, as Evans acknowledges - "achieving growth in one year can be done through acquisition or operating in a niche environment where there is little competition. The bigger and very different challenge for all recruitment businesses is to sustain growth. Medium-term growth is always the result of good sector knowledge, high service levels and the quality of the management and consultants and this will never change".
"Those companies in this year’s list are well placed to continue their growth as they have already demonstrated that they have addressed these key areas and I anticipate we will see a great number of them in next year’s Fast 50".
