Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Kevin Mcveigh – Credit Suisse.
Kevin Mcveigh – Credit Suisse
I wonder if you could give us a sense of where you think we are in the cycle today relative to the last cycle. It sounds like we're in a stabilization period now and as we think about the next couple of quarters, do we bounce along here? Obviously internally you've done a great job. Are we in a better position to power out earlier as opposed to last cycle? Just any thoughts you could share with us on that.
David Dunkel
I think it was a Who song where the line was, I wish I knew. As far as the cycle is concerned, anybody's guess. I've seen everything from L to V to W to I don't even know what letter in the alphabet, I just hope they don't use Z.
The key is that what we've done is to position Kforce to manage the business through whatever happens in the cycle and as we mentioned, as we moved into this year, we shifted from defense to offense and started to align the business to take advantage of what we think may be an improving environment as we move into the back end of this year and 2010.
If you look at the progress that we've made in operating expenses and productivity, if you look at the progress we've made in support infrastructure and shared services, our goal is to see enhanced revenue growth and enhanced operating leverage as we go forward.
I do believe that the environment that we're in and the severity and the length of the slowdown here, this recession, is likely going to buy us the clients more towards using consultants and flexible workers than to going to direct hire. That's been our experience in past recessions and the more severe it is, the less likely they are to trust it, so we believe that that will probably be what we'll see early on, but we are still obviously monitoring the market very closely, talking to our clients and it's too early to tell.
Kevin Mcveigh – Credit Suisse
What are you thoughts on the bill rate environment? It seems like on a relative basis, you aren't down as much as some of your peers. Is that kind of a function of the end markets? Any thought you have on that relative to the environment overall?
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