The recruitment industry’s trade body has launched an online candidate database to counter the threat of large employers using their own corporate jobsites to bypass the recruitment industry.

According to Colin Minto, managing director of the service, called RE-source, big firms are using their own CV databases to cut out the recruitment industry.

Corporate members of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) will be able to sign up to the service from next month. Firms will pay an initial £100 fee, then will be able to look at CVs for free and pay a £1 fee for every candidate they want to contact.

Some industry sources feared the site would ask agencies to submit candidates that they were unable to find work for, but Minto denied those rumours, claiming the bulk of the database would come from online marketing.

But he added: “If an agency finds a very good candidate comes through their door who they can’t find work for, they can refer them to the industry’s candidate database.”

Minto said he was considering letting firms submit unemployed candidates if there was demand for the service in the future.

But not everyone is convinced the scheme will work. Stephen O’Donnell, director of the jobsite alljobsuk.com, said: “If this is the REC’s answer to competitive pressures facing the recruitment sector, then they fundamentally do not understand online recruitment.

“The proposed RE-source project is a fairly thin concept with no real substance to it. This seems pretty lame to me, and I hope they are not going to put much money into it because it is not going to work.”

O’Donnell said it needed genuine job ads to attract candidates.

Minto dismissed the claims, saying candidates would be attracted by the quality service provided by participating agencies.