Business activities

What we do
Our business is based on one key service stream:

Specialist recruitment consultancy services – across more than 17 specialisms; in 2008, we placed 80,000 candidates into permanent jobs and found temporary assignments for approximately 300,000 people.

How we do it
Specialist recruitment is all about people:

Over 8,872 people make up our worldwide team, including 5,798 recruitment consultants working out of 393 offices in 27 countries; we share ideas, knowledge and experience across businesses and territories to deliver outstanding results.
Our people work with clients and candidates to place the right people in the right jobs; we invest heavily in equipping our staff with the skills to perform to the highest standards while developing their careers.
Our front and back offices are professionally administered by dedicated teams of support staff in IT, legal, finance, HR and marketing.

How we communicate with our customers

We commit substantial budgets to candidate and client marketing, using direct mail, PR, press advertising, internet advertising and e-marketing.
Our website, hays.com, attracts 1.3 million visitors and 140,000 job applications each month, with more than 57,000 live jobs online at any time.
Our office network ensures we’re physically present in all the places where we do business, ensuring clients and candidates receive the highest levels of real service.

Which sectors we service

At the heart of Hays are three large specialist businesses, representing our longest-established, largest and most successful business units; these are Accountancy & Finance, Construction & Property and Information Technology which operate across 27 countries.
Our financial recruitment units include Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Risk & Compliance and Taxation; in the legal market, we provide lawyers, legal support and company secretarial specialists.
We also specialise in professional sectors such as Contact Centres, Creative & Agency, Education, Human Resources, Logistics, Office Support, Purchasing, Retail, Sales & Marketing, Secretarial and Telecoms.
Technical disciplines are covered by divisions in Architecture, Building Services, Construction, Engineering & Consulting Engineering, Facilities Management, Property, Surveying and Trades & Labour.
Across many of these sectors, we also have further specialised teams dedicated to Public Services, Executive, International and Voluntary & Not-for-Profit recruitment.

Where we are

Our largest market is that of the United Kingdom and Ireland. This market accounts for 58% of the net fees for the Group. We have over 255 offices in the United Kingdom and Ireland and 3,128 recruitment consultants.
Our business in Continental Europe & Rest of World has been growing rapidly. We now operate in 19 countries in the region and have recently opened new operations in Hungary and Denmark.
We have also recently opened an office in Dubai and in 2006 acquired a specialist recruitment business in Japan, where we have begun our geographical expansion by opening in Osaka. We have also begun to open offices in China and other parts of South East Asia.
The growth of our business in Australia & New Zealand has been phenomenal and we continue to roll out our specialist activities across the network.

How we work together

Each Hays business is run autonomously with a distinct business unit identity, management team and structure. This gives each specialist business stream a clear style and identity, one that is reflective of the clients and candidates and the business sector being served.
Even with this relative independence, each business shares the brand values of Hays to ensure consistent standards of service quality, communication and delivery to each business sector in which we operate.

Our Business