Incisive Media's professional service division, of which Legal Week forms a part, recently gathered together senior figures from the recruitment industry to discuss the current malaise affecting the sector over a glass of wine or two.

Although clients and recruitment consultants were represented, the audience was primarily made up of executives from advertising agencies, two of whom were panelists: Sue Sowerby, joint managing director at The Sowerby Group, and Stewart Goold, client services director at ThirtyThree.

The other panel members were: James O'Brien, director of private practice at LPA Legal, John Barnes, managing director, digital strategy at Incisive Media, and Tim Forster, former head of experienced recruitment at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Sharing war stories appeared to have a cathartic effect on the panel and audience – and we had a wide-ranging discussion about the state of the market and where it might be heading. Here are some of the observations that were made:

How does this recession differ from the last one?

Considerably worse is the short answer. There are two reasons for this. First, because the credit crunch has hit every sector, whereas in the early 1990s there were some patches of growth. And second, because the web didn't exist back then, making life a lot more simple.

Everybody knew 2009 was going to be bad, but what problems were hard to foresee?

Budgeting has proved very difficult. It is human nature for people in business roles to keep busy in order to justify their existence. This applies to people in HR departments. Their companies may not be recruiting, but they need to keep active. Because of this, work that was promised at the start of the year has failed to materialise, driving a coach and horses through budgets. Agencies are also having to closely the monitor the resources they plough into pitches, given the number of prospects that come to nothing.

It is often said that recessions accelerate trends. Will print recruitment advertising ever return to anything like the levels seen before the downturn?

The web is a very powerful recruitment tool, but there will always be a place for print recruitment advertising – because of the branding opportunities if offers and because with online there is often a problem about the quality of applicants. There is a value in having people actively respond to print advertising as opposed to simply clicking a button to apply for a job.

The web presents HR departments with all sorts of low cost recruitment options – won't they simply cut out the middlemen and do the advertising themselves?

The web is exciting and fast-moving, but it is also extremely difficult to predict. If anything, this increases the need for companies to seek advice from consultants. If they try and do it themselves, they may be taking a big risk.

And what about the future for publishers like Incisive Media?

The web is a very fluid medium – fads come and go with remarkable speed and it is almost impossible to predict with any certainty where it is heading. In such an environment, established and trusted media brands are extremely well placed, especially if they are fleet of foot and learn how to ride off the back of platforms like Twitter.

Finally, as the economy stabilises, what are the prospects of the market picking up quickly?

Nobody doubts that the market will start to pick up, but one factor that could slow the pace of a return to some modicum of normality are the efforts many businesses are taking to hold on to their staff while cutting back on the cost of employing them, such as unpaid leave and part-time working. As business improves, these firms can gear themselves up accordingly without a wholesale return to the recruitment market.