'With 22 years' recruitment industry experience between us, we recognised the demand for establishment of a smaller recruitment firm that offers slightly different and more exacting services to clients,' states Mr Letcher.

Mr Oliver says: 'We met while both employed at one of the region's largest and most-recognised recruitment agencies, Michael Page, which was an excellent company to work for and one that provided us with much of the experience and expertise that we now bring to our own company.'

Mr Letcher says they recognised a need to provide client services not on offer elsewhere.

'We offer clients three distinct tools; database recruitment together with the much-recognised and traditional advertisement-driven recruitment, whilst also adding a third element, namely headhunting, which is very specific and targeted,' says Mr Letcher.

'We have adopted a principle of doing what's right for the client, and while we will carry out traditional retained searches we are also not afraid to tell a client when a traditional retained search is not right and that an advertised selection process is more appropriate for a specific assignment.

'The HR function in Asia is also becoming a more strategic office within companies, with more money being spent on organisational development and top-end HR people. The rationale for combining financial services with HR search and selection was simply that once an HR professional has been placed with a bank, that person immediately becomes a client of the financial services arm of the business.'

Profile's staff has grown from two to 10 in a few months.

'The biggest financial outlay in relation to Profile's start-up costs were obviously in relation to renting office premises here in Central, closely followed by staff wages,' says Mr Oliver.

'Following those two basic requirements, our major financial outlays were in relation to the design of our company logo, the creation of our website and marketing the company.

'We are able to provide highly personalised and very focused standards of service simply because we do not have the same flow of traffic as big HR firms.'

Mr Letcher says future expansion will depend on demand.

'Consolidation and growth of Profile in the marketplace of our two specified areas is obviously what we will be concentrating on in the immediate future.

'However, any future regional expansion of the company would focus on cities such as Shanghai, Tokyo and Singapore, which we can already identify as markets where the Profile business model would succeed.'