Our advantage

At Robert Walters, our purpose is to power people and organisations to fulfil their unique potential. In a competitive marketplace, the quality of service we have consistently delivered to our clients and candidates for close to four decades has seen the Robert Walters brand develop the strength it has today.

Each day, over 3,600 colleagues spread across 31 countries live out our core principles of teamwork, integrity, passion, innovation, quality and inclusion as we solve talent challenges, champion people’s stories and deliver better experiences and outcomes.

Our purpose drives our environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) commitments as we seek to positively impact lives, reduce our environmental impact and be a responsible, ethical business.

It also means we put people and relationships first, investing in technology which gives our consultants more time to deepen candidate and client relationships all while building a dynamic culture to attract and retain the best people.

The key elements that drive our business

Build a culture that people want to be part of

As a people business above all else, culture is the starting point for our model. We focus on building a culture that people want to be part of, contribute to and feel they belong in. Our leaders and people managers play a major role in modelling our core principles and valued behaviours, and this is then reinforced for our people more widely through how we train, recognise, incentivise and promote.

Attract fee earners who are specialists in their field

One of the ways our model is differentiated is in the specialist expertise upon which consultants can draw for the benefit of their clients and candidates. For some of our consultants this means that, prior to joining Robert Walters, they have worked in the disciplines they then go on to recruit into. All of our consultants know that taking the time to deeply understand the sectors in which their clients and candidates operate in will enable them to become ever more trusted advisers. As such, they prioritise understanding their candidates and therefore building stronger networks, and staying close to the end markets in which their clients operate.

Motivate and incentivise our people to deliver the best results together

The way in which we motivate, recognise and reward our people further helps to embed the behaviours and principles we believe are critical for success. We operate a team-based profit share for our fee earners instead of individual commission. Furthermore, candidates are not solely served by individual fee earners, but by a whole team. This actively promotes the sharing of ideas and ensures the needs of our candidates and clients always come first. This actively promotes the sharing of ideas and ensures the needs of our candidates and clients always come first.

Support our fee earners with the right tools and free up their time, enabling them to focus on their clients and candidates

Our consultants are trusted advisers and partners to their clients and candidates, and so we give them the best possible platform and toolkit to deepen and enhance these relationships of trust. Time is a critical resource, and we’re seeking to harness fast-evolving technological change (e.g. the deployment of AI to reduce human time given to standardised tasks) on behalf of our consultants so they can spend even more time with their clients and candidates.