by Real Business - Thursday, 30th August 2007

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WINNER - GARY LAURENCE

Let’s be honest. It’s fairly easy to build a recruitment company in the good times. But try doing it in the depths of a recession. That’s what Gary Laurence has done – and he’s now done it three times!

Laurence started his first recruitment firm in 1982. He sold it for £5m. The second, founded in the early 1990s, he flogged for an estimated ?18m. And the Huntress Group, which he set up in 2000, is the most successful of the lot, with a stock market flotation in the works for June 2006 at an expected market cap of more than £70m. Not bad for a kid who was selling antiques at Bermondsey market at 15 and flunked his accountancy exams.

Actually, Huntress got off to a terrible start. After raising £4.5m in venture capital, and hiring 100 staff, Laurence soon realised his cutting-edge new internet recruitment firm wasn’t going to work. It looked doomed to go the way of so many other dotcoms at the time.

But Laurence was savvy enough and experienced enough to get himself out of the hole he created. He went back to basics. And after an early scare, he’s never looked back. Sales at Huntress this year are up 60 per cent to £56m, and profits have more than doubled to £4m. He’s paid off the loan from his VCs two years early. And shelled out a massive dividend payment to key staff and the VCs as well.

How has he done this? In his latest iteration of the perfect recruitment business, he’s sought to address a number of inherent weaknesses of the recruitment agency.

First, he’s set out to build a “recession-proof” business model. So, instead of relying on a single market, Huntress has no speciality and works in PR/media, accountancy/ finance, IT and the public sector. It also finds permanent, contract and temp positions.

The second inherent weakness he’s addressed is a flaw of many service-based businesses: how to lock in employees and clients to sustain growth. He’s done this by tying generous performance bonuses with lengthy contracts. And he’s big on the vision thing, on motivation, people management, and selling a dream. The feel-good factor is also extended to candidates, who can search for jobs at one of the web cafes that Huntress has in its offices.

The other weapon in the Huntress armoury is technology. Though a lot of the initial tech investment was thrown away with the first business plan, Laurence never lost faith in the importance of technology – including the web.

Web mining, a heavily customised CRM system, an online recruitment website: all the innovation has been built around either improving results or reducing costs. It’s meant Huntress hasn’t had to open lots of regional offices or employ secretaries. Above all, it means Huntress can compete with the recruitment giants for large accounts. It recently won master vendor contracts with global consultants Accenture and Axon. It really is Merry Christmas, Mr Laurence.

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