RECRUITMENT firms are following the trend of the “big five” global firms in the legal and accounting industries.
As their clients are going global, the larger recruiting firms are going global themselves to provide better service.
This has led to the creation of at least the big two recruiters in TMP and Michael Page.
Australia’s recruitment in-dustry has already felt the brunt of the globalisation. TMP bought Morgan & Banks. More recently UK-based recruiter Robert Walters bought Dunhill Management Services for about $22 million.
Dunhill, which had nine offices around Australia, had been looking to float last year but the market malaise following the April technology stock collapse put paid to that.
And just as the global consolidation in the financial and legal industries created second-tier and boutique firms, the same has occurred within the recruitment industry.
For example, former Morgan & Banks WA managing director Richard Hazlewood created his own boutique executive recruit-ment firm exec.search pty ltd to target the senior management recruitment market.
Robert Walters chief executive Robert Walters said his financial services and information technology recruitment company hoped to become the third member in a global recruiting industry big three.
“Recruitment will probably follow banks, law firms and accounting firms in the big-five stakes,” he said.
“If you look at each of these industries you find that if there are more than five big firms they usually consolidate down. Any less than five and the customers start wanting more choice.
“It’s a bit of that old saying that a person never got fired for buying IBM. Having an inter-national name is becoming more important.
“The only difference is the US, which has a much more branch commission shop environment. Firms over there seem to grow on a franchise-like basis.”
Mr Walters said his company had taken over Dunhill to give it a greater presence in Australia and to broaden its services.
It had an office in Sydney and Melbourne before the takeover.
“We are one of the biggest placers of Australian temps in the UK financial services industry. If we have a bigger reach in Australia we have the ability to source people better,” Mr Walters said.
“And when they’ve finished their UK trip we place them back into jobs in Australia.”