Fast-growing recruiters shine in Fast Track 100
Recruitment companies are a shining example of how to reach fast growth, according to research of around 900 companies that have appeared in The Sunday Times Fast Track 100.
Recruitment companies are a shining example of how to reach fast growth, according to research of around 900 companies that have appeared in The Sunday Times Fast Track 100.
The report, carried out by public sector researcher Loudhouse on behalf of SAP UK & Ireland and Delta Economics, discovered that only 47% of companies that featured in the Fast Track 100 rankings at the start of the decade are still in business today.
‘A Fast Track Decade: Analysing 10 years of high performance’, which examines the performance of companies that have featured in the Fast Track 100 since 2001, found that one in five of the 2009/10 Fast Track 100 were recruitment companies.
Researchers put this achievement mainly down to the flexible infrastructure of recruitment firms. “The attributes you need for fast growth are epitomised in recruitment companies,” Billy Hamilton-Stent, managing director at Loudhouse, told Recruiter at a private briefing last week.
“It [the recruitment industry] is inherently flexible and highly adaptable. It works on a basis of knowledge capital and this knowledge is highly transferable,” he adds. “But flexibility seems to be the most enduring component that stands the test of time.”
The biggest challenge that SME recruitment companies face lies in continuing the initial growth period and expanding further, says Hamilton-Stent, who points out that although there are several prominent, large recruitment firms, it is rare for the small and medium-sized businesses to break into this sphere.
John Autunes, director of SME & Channels for SAP UKI, says the report identifies five attributes, which are “key ingredients for longer-term success”. These are the strength of management, innovation, occupying a niche market, timing, and the all important flexibility of structure, product or service and workforce.
And Dr Rebecca Harding, chief executive of Delta Economics, told Recruiter that recruitment companies highlight “the message that labour is very important” to fiscal growth, especially to SMEs. “Recruitment and retention is the most important part of the flexible mix.”
The report found that overall, high growth companies are growing more slowly over time, with the average growth rate of businesses that featured from 2001-05 at 29.2% compared to 25.5% in the period between 2006 and 2010.
