Recruiters must move up the value chain by becoming more consultants than sales people or risk disappearing, delegates at today’s APSCo conference have heard.

Speaking at the Hilton London Tower Bridge Hotel, Anthony Hilton, financial editor of the London Evening Standard, warned that agencies risked going the same way as the classified ads in the Evening Standard. This fell from a peak of 50 pages and £1m revenue a day and to just five “on a good day”, he said.

“We were a marketplace for recruitment and it’s gone. You are a marketplace for recruitment and it could go for you too.”

Hilton said the risk to agencies came from disintermediation, with clients believing they could find people themselves without external help.

And he urged recruiters to be more proactive in demonstrating the added value they could bring to clients. “You have to be become more a consultant than a salesman,” he said.

He advised recruiters not to underestimate what knowledge they already have, and suggested they could add value by advising clients on industry trends, by benchmarking or on restructuring.