The managing director of IT recruitment job board, Jobserve, has denied that he is considering selling CVs direct to advertisers.

Robbie Cowling claimed that the practice – which would effectively cut recruitment agencies out of the IT contractor market – is something he would never do.

“We are not going to do it. It is written in our terms and conditions that clients cannot look at our candidates’ CVs. It is something we cannot do and is not even an option,” he said.

Businesses within the IT recruitment industry are concerned that Jobserve could offer candidate information directly from its database to advertising clients.

Recruitment companies pay to place candidates’ CVs on Jobserve, and there are now fears that Cowling could be opening this candidate database directly to advertisers.

This would take business away from the recruitment consultants who pay to place adverts on Jobserve.

Ann Swain, chief executive of the IT recruitment body, ATSCo, said hard times might make Cowling adopt more aggressive strategies.

She said: “Robbie Cowling said he would never sell advertising directly to clients and that it was only going to be open to agencies – he turned that on its head last year.

“He has looked into other areas of the market such as accountancy. But it has been unsuccessful.

“The amount of recruitment advertising has dropped from 70,000 to 20,000 adverts but what he does have is a comprehensive CV database.”

Recruitment companies are banned from passing on CVs on their databases and cannot even pass them on to managed agencies.

Meanwhile, Cowling has claimed that he is attempting to increase his market share during the downturn with a £150,000 marketing initiative.

The initiative will include a web-enabled IT battlebus that will travel the country promoting Jobserve.