Not cutting headcount to the extent that competitors did in the downturn and maintaining marketing budgets have helped technical staffing specialist Harvey Nash grab marketshare and generate rising revenue.

The group’s results for the year ended 31 January 2011 reveal revenues rose to £422m from £376m last year, gross profit rose from £60.4m to £68.5m, while profit before tax increased from £1.3m to £6.3m.

Chief executive Albert Ellis told Recruiter that while the group has recorded improved performance across its international network, UK operations have benefited from a bounceback in the UK economy and an increased investment in mobile technology.

“The revenues for the last year have exceeded the peak of 2008 and 2009. The recruitment market isn’t back to the volumes of 2007 and 2008. Economies are recovering and when they recover, temporary recruitment precedes a recovery in permanent recruitment and that improves the bottom line of all recruitment companies.

“This is the first year of recovery and we do think that these marketshare gains are significant. We have won many contracts. We didn’t cut our headcount to the extent that many recruiters did. In the UK there was a quite a bloodbath among the major players. Our reduction in headcount was around 15-18% overall, right throughout the recession. We only cut our cost base by less than half of what our competitors did, which gave us greater capacity coming into the recovery.

“In the UK we have had a very good year. The UK is very much a permanent and temporary recruitment-led recovery. It is a surprisingly good year given that many recruiters in the UK have suffered and have seen growth in other markets like Asia, Europe etc.

“One of the decisions we took in the recession was to not only maintain our marketing and client engagement but to actually increase it. Our budget for marketing, advertising and brand development actually increased in real terms in the recession — all with the objective of increasing our marketshare — that’s paid off for us enormously.”

And Ellis adds that moving forward the key strategy for the group is to capitalise on these marketshare gains. “We are hiring into areas where we have a leading market position, whether it’s Switzerland, Germany, the Nordics and the UK. Even in the US we have increased staffing to capitalise on the economy.”