Web savvy SME's have the biggest ambitions?

The web is having a significant and positive impact on the fortunes of recruitment agencies, according to a new study by thebestof, a national network of local marketing websites.

The research shows that small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) plan to grow their businesses by on average 38% in the coming year. However, the more web-savvy SMEs including recruitment agencies have growth ambitions that are twice those of their conventional SME counterparts.

The study found that internet-enabled recruitment agencies get 56% of their enquiries from the web.

It found that 58% of the internet active recruitment agencies describe their competitors as bigger than them, whereas the less internet active are more likely to say their competitors are the same size as them or smaller.

Nigel Botterill, chief executive of thebestof, says: "The first wave of the internet seemed to be all about the major brands and retailers, or businesses like lastminute.com or ebay, whose whole premise is built on the internet. What this research shows is that there's a whole generation of ordinary small businesses - like recruitment agencies - who have been quietly working in the background, using the web to steal market share from their bigger competitors.

"It is extraordinary to see how the internet is delivering so much for some and yet so little for others."

www.london4jobs.co.uk

Source: www.onrec.com newsletter