The Recruitment and Employment Confederation said it wants to work with the Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE), which has announced that a "major industry taskforce" will put the "activities and behaviour" of recruitment consultancies "under the spotlight".

ACE has accused recruiters of unethical behaviour. The taskforce, which includes representation from HR and operational professionals from some of the leading consultancy firms in the UK, aims to establish the real extent of current skills shortages facing the industry and will draw up strategies to address them. ACE added that it has suspended its current affiliate relationships with Hays and Matchtech while the taskforce conducts its investigations.

Tom Hadley, external affairs director at the REC, told Recruiter he had contacted ACE and wanted to have more dialogue to understand its concerns. He said: "We are keen to hear what they have to say and to work with them."

ACE chief executive Nelson Ogunshakin said: "Recruitment and retention challenges and the activities of the recruitment industry have been raised at the highest level in ACE and our board has decided to take action. Firms consistently say that skills shortages, compounded by the unethical behaviour of some recruitment consultancies, are at the top of their list of challenges. We aim to establish the real extent of the problems and develop effective and sustainable strategies to address them."

Hadley said he wanted to find out exactly what ACE meant by unethical behaviour. He said: "It could include things like poaching staff, but that's not illegal. It happens everywhere."

Ogunshakin told Recruiter that one example of unethical behaviour was where a consultant would place a candidate with a firm and then approach the candidate, as soon as the rebate period had ended, trying to encourage him to change jobs again. He said he wanted to find out what REC was doing to enforce its code of practice.

Hadley said: "I know ACE will have come under pressure from its members. We have a code of practice and want to make the industry more professional. For some sectors such as childcare we have sector-specific codes of practice, though I don't think we would necessarily need one for engineering."

Tim Cook, managing director of Hays Consulting Engineering, said: "We welcome ACE's recent announcement and strongly support any initiatives which seek to benefit the industry and readdress the problem of skills shortages.

"Recruitment can often be a highly contentious issue and we should remember that ACE members are also part of the hiring community.

"We have previously enjoyed a strong working relationship with the ACE and have been assured that their decision to investigate recruitment consultancies is no reflection on us and that it merely forms part of their investigation."

A spokesman from Matchtech said the company understood the decision and supported it, in view of the investigation.

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