Established in 1961 by Constance Watts with a single office in Birmingham, this recruitment agency is now run by her son, Tim Watts, who joined Pertemps in the early 1970s. With 200 branches in more than 100 towns and cities nationwide, Pertemps claims to handle 25,000 temporary staff each week and support 40 FTSE 100 companies. The company, which plans to launch an interactive satellite-TV channel called JobsTV this year, reported an operating profit of £3m on billings of £341m in 2002, when it had 1,423 staff.