Resourcing and senior HR professionals will be in demand come the recovery, according to recruiters.

A survey from IT and business services firm Logica this week showed that over a third of HR departments claim they do not have the necessary HR personnel in place to deal with an upturn.

John Maxted, chief executive at Digby Morgan, told Recruiter: “There is a shortage of resourcing expertise because there has not been much recruitment. It is line with all functions that have been made leaner in the past year, where they have focused on quality rather than quantity.”

Allison Gray, senior consultant at Escape Recruitment Services, adds: “I think as a result of the downturn a lot of senior HR people have been culled, which has left firms exposed if redundancies have not been implemented adequately. And in terms of strategic HR and forward planning, a huge gap of knowledge won’t be in the business.”