As published on Financial Times by Gill Plimmer.

The shape of the current recession has been described in many ways – a double-dipping W with more pain to come or a V-style recovery, with the rise as steep as the fall.

But Gary Burnison, chief executive of Los Angeles-based Korn/Ferry, the world’s largest headhunter by revenue, says it will be a Nike-shaped “swoosh” – a gradual return to health following last year’s hurtle down a “double black-diamond ski slope”.

There are signs of an uptick already. The financial services sector, which led the world into the downturn, could lead the way out, according to Mr Burnison. Just last week, he received a mandate to look for 1,000 private bankers to fill roles in Latin America.

But, like recruiters everywhere, Mr Burnison remains reluctant to call the end of the recession. It is “green sprouts”, not shoots, he says, and “it’s as hard as it has been in the past 10 months to get a net new hire”.

The slide in employment last year hit Korn/Ferry, which has 80 offices in 40 countries, as hard as it did recruiters everywhere, with the company losing £500m ($800m) worth of new business almost overnight. Job losses followed, with headcount falling at the company by as much as 30 per cent in the past year as it strove to save cash.

But in spite of the rout, Korn/Ferry managed to keep itself in the limelight by making several high-profile appointments – including William Dudley, chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Ben Verwaayen as CEO at Alcatel Lucent, and Bruce Van Saun, chief financial officer at Royal Bank of Scotland.

In Britain, the company has recently bought the famously discreet Whitehead Mann partnership, which has handled key positions for the Financial Services Authority, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland.

Whitehead Mann is typically described as a “Saville Row” type brand, after the upmarket shopping street in London – and the hope is that the new Korn/Ferry Whitehead Mann in the UK will help the company expand in what is arguably its second-biggest market. Mr Burnison argues that the recession provides opportunities for recruiters and clients alike.

“Companies make their best moves in these markets; if you have significant economic tailwinds it’s very hard to change. This is much more exciting,” he says.

To this end there have been new hirings at Korn/Ferry even as there have been firings and Mr Burnison readily admits that many of his clients have used the recession to cull less productive workers and upgrade staff.

“Despite what people say about organisations cancelling weaker staff, they don’t normally because people don’t like to have those difficult conversations – whether in the family, at work, or wherever.”

While the recession has not necessarily made the business of making redundancies easy, the sheer scale of job losses has provided an emotional shield to both employers and those set for the chop.

Nevertheless, sacking a father-of-three recently remains one of the hardest tasks faced by Mr Burnison. “There he was, a grown individual with three kids, in my office and he broke down and cried. These things are not pleasant to do.”