A rise in contract roles last year has had a positive impact on recruiter Matchtech Group’s results.

According to chief executive Adrian Gunn, an increased reliance on temporary and contract labour has helped the engineering, science, technology and professional services staffing specialist record an 8% increase in net fee income (NFI).

A trading update for the six months ending 31 January 2011 reveals NFI for the period was £13.5m, up 8% against the same period last year.

The results echo today’s Daily Mail report that 97% of jobs created last year were part-time roles. Matchtech Group reports contract placements made up 77% of the firm’s hires in H2, up from 68% in H1.

This was in contrast to its total of 23% of permanent hires, down from 32% in H1.

The firm also increased its headcount in the UK by 13%, up from 143 in January last year to 162 staff this year, while the firm’s professional services division’s staffing levels rose from 40 to 78 and the company’s team in Germany doubled from four to eight employees.

Gunn told Recruiter: “We looked at investing in headcount last year; we wanted to recruit the sales force ahead of the recovery so we were ahead of the curve. We wanted to build on Matchtech’s expertise as a technical recruitment business and you see the growth there in information systems and technology which has been very strong over the past six months.

“We have also diversified the business and invested in additional revenue streams in the professional services market place in areas like traditional financial services, accounting, HR, marketing and procurement.

“We looked at the German recruitment market and if you look at our core capabilities within automotive, aerospace and energy, they are very large in Germany. The German labour market is relaxing with regards to its use of temporary labour, so we thought it was an ideal time to take our expertise internationally. Early indications are positive.

“We have always been a contract-focused business because the nature of the projects are infrastructure projects, so they may last 18 months or two years. A contract workforce lends itself to that arena. There are some clients that don’t have the confidence to recruit permanently and need to complete projects so will use temporary or contract labour to fill that void until that confidence comes back.”