Are recruitment firms as great a place to work for in 2013 as they were last year? 

The Sunday Times ‘100 Best Small Companies to Work for List’ this year sees 23 recruitment consultancies listed, down slightly from 25 last year, with Pertemps Professional Staffing Network leading the recruiter field in third place.

The number of medium-sized recruitment firms in the equivalent Best Companies list, released last week, was also down on the previous year’s list.

The Best Small Companies to Work lists firms with 50-249 employees, and is compiled for the newspaper by Best Companies. The full list is available online.

1.Pertemps Professional Staffing Network, ranked third overall (2012 rank: 21)

2.La Fosse Associates, fourth (new entry)

3.Austin Fraser, seventh (new entry)

4.Penta Consulting, eighth (2012: 13)

5.Premier Group Recruitment, 13 (new entry)

6.Leap29, 17 (2012: 14)

7.Nicoll Curtin Recruitment, 24 (2012: 100)

8.Taskmaster, 33 (2012: 19)

9.G2V Group, 42 (new entry)

10.networx, 46 (new entry)

11.Spencer Ogden Energy, 52 (new entry)

12.GCS Recruitment Specialists, 56 (2012: 32)

13.Timothy James Consulting, 61 (2012: 12)

14.Tate, 62 (2012: 87)

15.Macdonald & Company, 65 (2012: 63)

16.Next Ventures, 70 (new entry)

17.Spring Personnel, 78 (2012: 56)

18.Arrows Group, 83 (2012: 82)

19.de Poel, 88 (2012: 34)

20.Aspire Global Network, 90 (2012: 55)

21.Huntswood, 93 (new entry)

22.Faststream Recruitment Group, 94 (2012: 97)

23.Oliver James Associates, 95 (new entry) – also the leading company in this year’s Recruiter FAST 50 list of the UK’s fastest growing staffing companies.

Pertemps Recruitment Partnership, another firm in the Pertemps network, also made the medium-sized list, alongside Adecco UK, and its subsidiary Spring Personnel.

Recruiter was particularly interested by one detail from the Spencer Ogden Energy company information. “The boss is so admired at Spencer Ogden Energy that employees are moved to dress like him. All 96 employees at the specialist energy recruiter turned up as David Spencer-Percival, the company’s founder and chief executive, for his birthday. One employee explains why ‘dress like DSP day’ worked: ‘I think this shows not only the humour of the company but how much the staff like and respect David’,” it reads.

As was the case last year, no recruitment firm made the Best Big Companies list, for firms with over 5,000 staff, released on the same day. The final list in the series is Best Not-For-Profit Organisations, which will be published on Sunday, 17 March.

•Recruiter magazine’s industry-specific take on the best recruitment companies to work for is one of the many conundrums for the expert judges of the Recruiter Awards for Excellence 2013, sponsored by Eploy, which features both two ‘best recruitment agency to work for’ categories, for recruiters with more than or less than 50 staff respectively.