FAST 50: Healthcare trio thrives while others find growth hard to come by
Representation of healthcare recruiters in the FAST 50 has fallen by half to three compared with six in last year’s FAST 50.
The January 2013 issue of Recruiter magazine features (see p32) the annual ranking of the fastest-growing private recruitment businesses in the UK produced in association with mergers and acquisitions advisers Boxington Corporate Finance. The ranking is based on compound annual sales growth as measured over the entrant’s most recent three-year financial period.
Mark Kingston, senior executive at Boxington Corporate Finance, attributes the low number of healthcare recruiters in this year’s rankings to the uncertainty caused by the tendering for NHS framework agreements. This reflects a more general trend across the public sector “to exert greater control of human capital”, he says, “with the NHS being in the forefront of this.”
Kingston suggests that as a consequence, “while there are pockets of growth, these pockets are harder to come by”. In the medium term, Kingston says he expects there to be a consolidation of the healthcare market “as the shakeout from framework agreements reshapes the landscape”.
FAST 50 2013 healthcare recruiters:
1. Pathology Group
2. ID Medical
3. Global Medics
John Zafar, chief executive officer of Pathology Group, says that a key factor behind the firm’s growth is the way it has structured its brands to reflect the medical profession. Pathology Group has six brands covering discrete areas of healthcare such as GP World and Psychiatry People.
“When doctors meet they don’t say ‘I am a doctor’ they say ‘I am a paediatrician or an oncologist’. We align ourselves with the way medical professionals see themselves, that is by speciality – that is our USP,” he tells Recruiter.
Zafar explains that as a result of this focus on medical specialisms the company’s recruiters are genuine experts within those specialisms. He says: “They understand the nuances, career structures, supply and demand patterns, as well as having a very strong knowledge of the candidates and the reasons for putting them forward.”
