Organisations with recruitment interests performed strongly in the The Sunday Times 2012 Top Track 250’, a league table that ranks mid-market firms by sales. 

The list is intended to complement the newspaper’s Top Track 100, which was published earlier this year.

This year’s table featured 13 companies with recruitment interests compared with 10 last year. Eight companies were represented in the top 100 compared with only five in 2011.  

Tim Evans, managing director of Boxington Corporate Finance, compiler of Recruiter’s Fast 50, tells Recruiter the table represents a “very strong showing from recruitment”. 

A number of companies in The Sunday Times also featured in Recruiter’s Fast 50 2012.

Technical recruiters with global operations in oil & gas were particularly prominent, with technical oil & gas recruiter Fircroft in 10th place, with sales of £562m, the highest ranked of the 13. 

In June, private equity firm Equistone Partners Europe paid £140m to buy a “significant stake” in the company. Fircroft ranked 12th in Recruiter’s 2012 Fast 50.

Fircroft was followed by Alexander Mann Solution in 18th place (£517m) and technical/engineering recruiter Morson in 23rd position (£508m). 

Multi-sector recruiter Cordant Group were 30th. 

Technical/engineering recruiter NES Global Talent placed 64th (£380m). Earlier this month, private equity firm Graphite Capital sold the company to private investment vehicle AEA Investors for £234m. 

Other staffing companies to feature strongly were:

65 de Poel (agency staff procurement consultancy)

83 Swift Worldwide Resources (oil & gas recruitment agency), ranked 7th in Recruiter’s Fast 50

100 Orion Group (engineering/technical recruiter)

103 Pertemps (multi-sector recruitment agency)

142 Rullion Group (multi-sector recruitment agency)

164 A4e (outsourced employment adviser)

191 Air Energi (international oil & gas sector technical recruiter), Air Energi recently completed a management buyout

248 The Best Connection (multi-sector staffing provider)

Evans notes the number of players “mainly in the technical ‘blue and grey collar’ sectors”.

“There is not one player in the professional white collar recruitment – except Alexander Mann, which is not a classic recruiter anyway,” he adds. 

“Reasons for the particular strong technical recruiter showing is that low gross margins and the need for expensive local office networks, both in the UK and overseas, has driven a number of these players towards greater scale in order to maintain profitability.”

In contrast, he says the lack of professional white collar recruiters “is probably explained by the greater barriers to scale faced by professional recruiters relating to the attraction and retention of the consultants required for similar scale, and no doubt also to an unwillingness to accept gross margin erosion as the larger technical recruiter have done”.