1. Take an honest look at your firm, identify your key attraction strategies for candidates and work to "accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative". Consistently the four most important attractors are ethics, quality of clients, ability to offer choice and finally honest support. Make sure that all your candidates' can easily find your client list, testimonials and your strategy.

2. First impressions count: put yourself in the place of a candidate and look critically at all the points where a candidate first comes into contact with your firm. This will include website, job board, consultant's phone manner and even your reception area.

3. Recruitment process: should be effective, efficient, fast, professional and friendly. Very, very few firms get it right, yet here is a real opportunity for recruitment firms to educate their clients to impress and have real competitive edge. More potential matches fall apart because of problems or delays in the process than any other reason. Make sure that your clients understand that delaying decisions could put them in a position where there is no offer to make.

4. Making the offer: another critical stage that is rarely handled well, even though the basics are surprisingly obvious. Make sure you know everything about your candidates current package and have specifically discussed their requirements and understand the reasons for them. Make them feel wanted. Try to encourage clients to offer them just a bit more than they were expecting. Keep in touch with them. Get the offer out quickly. Follow it up with a friendly 'phone call – not a pushy one". If the client can't offer them quite what they want encourage the client to be creative: an early salary review, a bonus guarantee or perhaps enhanced benefits.