And when you start to cut, those things start to now get impacted on those projects that have to be moved forward. So, I think that that’s what really creates this stabilization that’s going on. So if anything were to change, I would say basically it’s the pain points that organizations are feeling on having to get some of these projects moving and some of them over to gold line.
Kartik Mehta: Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
Joe Liberatore: Sure.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Marc Riddick from Sidoti. Please go ahead.
Marc Riddick: Hi. Good evening, everyone.
Joe Liberatore: Good evening, Riddick.
Marc Riddick: I wanted to first say congratulations, Dave and Jeff, as others have said, congratulations on the roles, and certainly looking forward to continuing to move forward there. I just wanted to follow up, piggyback on one of your comments earlier, Joe, about the, you know, the customer behavior that you had and I really appreciate all the color that you’ve already given. I was wondering if you’re seeing from a sense of, are there sort of industry customer segment leaders that are kind of further along that process of sort of making that turn that you’re seeing or are you generally seeing that across the board?
David Kelly: Yeah, Marc, so that’s a bit of a difficult one. Obviously, we mentioned, there are a number of industries, right, Financial Services, for example, or Healthcare, Retail that have got some headwinds, right. But again, to Joe’s point, those mission-critical activities are what market leaders need to do to stay leading in the marketplace. Obviously, there are other industries maybe a bit more conducive in a more positive environment. I’d mentioned Transportation, right? You’re hearing about what’s happening with Travel, Utilities. Those are industries that we’ve had, relatively speaking, better performance in. But I don’t know that there is any specific industry or industries that are notably different from any other, right. As I said, the market leaders of every industry are thinking critically about what is necessary to maintain — stay on top.
Marc Riddick: Okay. And then the last one for me, actually, is just around, I wonder if you could sort of share some thoughts on candidate availability and maybe what you’re seeing, if there are certain pockets where that’s starting to loosen up a little bit, or, you know, versus maybe some others where it’s extraordinarily, you know, about I guess maybe it’s the same or maybe more difficult to find the type of candidates that you’re looking for. Thanks.
Joe Liberatore: Yes. I would say that, again, you know, and especially in the technology areas that we play in, which are the highest demand areas, you know, candidates are always hard to come by. They’ve been hard to come by for as long as I’ve been in this industry. The segments have changed, the skill sets have changed, but we’ve always focused in those areas of highest demand. So, I mean, again, this is why I go back to [Technical Difficulty) if somebody ever asked me what is your number one core competency? It is the ability to go out and identify the best candidates available in the market, bring them to our clients in a timely fashion, and engage them. So, you know, that’s one I — that’s one that really doesn’t change for us over time.
I will say one of the dynamics that has changed over the course of the last year is probably the amount of competing offers those individuals have on their table, you know, obviously. So that helps a little bit in terms of when we do have a client that’s interested, our ability to engage that consultant with that client because we’re not dealing with competing offers, right. If you were to go back into that very robust 2021, 2022 time period, there were a lot of individuals that our customers wanted to engage, but they elected to pursue another opportunity just because there was so much demand out there. You do see less of that. We also see people more probably considerate in terms of those opportunities they’ll want to look at in these types of clients, which means, when you do engage with consultants that are in the marketplace and they’re looking to make a move, they’re much more serious about it because they’re not going to take risks in a little bit more of an uncertain climate.
Those are the kind of dynamics that we deal with more versus availability of candidates.
David Kelly: The other thing I — the only other thing I would add, right. So, it always comes out in the numbers, right, being a former CFO, both Joe and I, bill rates and pay rates continue to rise, right. So, if there was a dislocation in an availability of talent, you would see it in what clients are willing to pay and what candidates are willing to accept.
Marc Riddick: Great. Thank you very much.
Joe Liberatore: Sure.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Josh Chan from UBS. Please go ahead.
Josh Chan: Hi, good afternoon, and congrats to Dave and Jeff as well. I guess my first question may be a bigger-picture question. So, it sounds like you are — you sound better and are guiding for some improvement into Q4. At the same time, you mentioned that economists expect a recession next year. So, how do you think Kforce would perform, hypothetically, if there is a recession coming, are we at a bottom anyways from a needs perspective and therefore a recession won’t really impact you that much from here on?
Joe Liberatore: Yeah, and it’s, right, and again, going back to, you know, every one of these cycles is different. Every one of them is unpredictable, they react differently. Probably to answer that question, it would be what type of a recession? Meaning if it was short and shallow, been in this industry before where we’ve been experiencing things like we have been, which is revenue deterioration and recessions hadn’t been called. And by the time a recession is called, actually, our Flex business was moving in a positive direction by the time a recession is called. By no means am I saying that is what’s going to happen this time, but we have seen that in prior cycles. So, it really just depends upon the nature of what that recession is, you know, how deep, how long, how short, how shallow.
