Editor's Comment

15-April-2009 | By DeeDee Doke

Andrew Gilchrist’s bold acquisition of 31 branches of Kelly Services has injected some much needed positive energy into recruitment at a psychologically grey time. He has taken, as the saying goes, one person’s lemons and is turning them into lemonade.

But one of his comments to Recruiter (included in our Profile on p24) is rather worrying: he says that the barriers to entry in the business are lower than ever before. That’s all well and good if you’re a business whizz who knows how to manage money and people. But low barriers to entry have created longstanding problems for the recruitment industry; the low, low, low barriers have been seized upon by opportunists as a gateway to easy money. Hard-working and aspirational professionals have felt the consequences in terms of reputation and client wariness (see News p6).

Enterprising entrepreneurs with substantive track records deserve financial encouragement and support — no question. But especially given the state of the marketplace right now, we take the view than low barriers to entry for the less-than-verifiably-successful recruiter are not only undesirable but an invitation to disaster.

DeeDee Doke
Editor