So I understand the number of recruitment consultants has dropped from 120,000 to 70,000 in the UK. The 50,000 that left the industry were not the big billing consultants or talented account managers - they were by and large the recruiters that just got by every year.

Now we have shed what seems to be the excess recruiters, we now operate in an industry where we only have talented recruiters, thus our industry can grow in a more effective and more efficient way.

The story is correct; we do need more recruiters in this rapidly expanding marketplace and the only place we will find this is from graduates, and not by knocking on the doors of former recruiters that left during the downturn.

Obviously the issue is attracting the right graduates that know recruitment is the industry in which they want to build their career. There are options available to help you source these and an assessment centre where the graduates are put through their paces is usually a great place to source this talent. At Red Ventures, we have been running these for six months, and the demand and response is so popular we now have an assessment centre every week.
Daniel Gostelow, senior consultant, Red Ventures