Keith Waddell: Yes, I’d say the environment is about the same. I’d say that in that environment, we’re getting a larger and larger share because we have something their competitors don’t, and that’s under one roof. We have talent solutions and Protiviti. They have access to the operational resources at scale that none of their competitors have. We’re winning more and more every day. And further, as they compete with their traditional big four competitors, I believe even their clients would tell you that Protiviti’s resources are more specialized as to industry. They’re more specialized as to their capabilities because Protiviti doesn’t have near as broad a solution offering as those other firms do where many times they’re leveraging the staff across those solution offerings in a way to keep their chargeability up that Protiviti doesn’t have to.
So a, Protiviti is more specialized, b, Protiviti has access to talent solutions, both of which give Protiviti competitive advantage and they’re increasing market share and they’re doing great.
Kartik Mehta: Well, thank you both. I really appreciate it.
Operator: And your next question comes from the line of Mark Marcon with Baird. Please go ahead.
Mark Marcon: I recognize we’re out of time, but I wanted to ask this in a public forum. Just are you seeing any sort of differences from a regional perspective just in terms of the trends, whether it’s Northeast California versus, say, Texas, Florida, or industry differences that are illuminating in any way, shape or form. And then if you want to discuss briefly just the potential impact of AI in terms of increasing the efficiency of your operations from a longer-term perspective?
Keith Waddell: I guess the only regional comment I would make is that the coasts are a little softer than the middle of the country. I would also point out that Germany and the U.K. had very good quarters. They have much better outlook for this quarter than we would have expected. So our international results are, frankly, a little better than our United States results in Germany, particularly in U.K. as well impact that. As to AI, we’ve talked before to totally transform how we identify talent. We have 30 million people in our proprietary candidate database. In real time, we can get a short list of the most matching candidates, of candidates that have a proven track record with us, of candidates that are active in the job market.
We, in real time, can access through that 30 million number of people in that candidate database, which is a huge competitive advantage for us. It’s making our people more productive. It’s allowing our people to earn more money. It’s €“ internally, we call it ART, AI recommended talent, but ART is now a household word in Robert Half. A year ago, that would not be the case. We would like to do the same thing on the client side, on the lead side, as I talked about earlier. So we would like to have an ARC as well as an ART, receiving AI recommended clients. And so that’s where we’re focused at the moment. I’m cautiously optimistic we’ll have an impact there. But we couldn’t be more pleased with what AI has done for our organization.
Mark Marcon: Perfect. Thank you.
