Press Coverage
On the up and up
Professional Recruiter - 2001-01-31
Business is about to change, and it is often said that those who manage change the best will succeed. This is certainly true of the recruitment industry, as anyone in the recruitment to recruitment market will confirm.
Over the last 12 months, organisations in that arena have joined the industry body and watched their profile rise. There's also a perception that standards have been rising. Whether this is actually true, or whether quality that already existed has only recently been recognised, is an interesting debate.
The argument
Not everyone agrees with the perception problem, however. Zena Everett, partner at Perriam & Everett, says 'We recruit on behalf of professional companies who share our values. If they weren't happy with our service they wouldn't use us - the recruitment industry overall might not have the most wonderful reputation, but a lot of people still use it and are happy with it.'
Club rules
Whether the REC's decision to allow rec-to-recs in was a reaction to or a catalyst for what is becoming the effective legitimisation of the rec-to-rec market is unclear, but there are those who question the value of its having done so.
As Perriam & Everett's Zena Everett points out, the recruitment industry itself doesn't always enjoy the most favourable of images among its clients - hitting a sub-group with the same stick that the rest of the would uses on the whole sector is perverse.
You might pause to wonder just why the industry body was excluding this area in the first place: 'If the REC is supposed to be independent, then it had no business excluding an entire sector,' comments Tempest's Lowther.
