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January 24, 2011

For hire | Staffing agencies see pockets of hiring as Maine slowly emerges from recession-related cuts

Photo/Tim Greenway Ed McKersie, president of staffing firm Pro Search, says employers are increasingly hiring temporary workers on a project-specific basis
By Carol Coultas

A convergence of employment trends suggests Maine employers might be loosening the hiring reins, at least for key positions, and replenishing staffing levels curtailed during the recession.

“At least in southern Maine, we’re seeing the market become more robust,” says Laura Thibodeau, owner and president of Springborn Staffing in Portland. “From the second half of ’08 and through ’09, there were many companies that, say, had their financial operations person wearing the HR hat, too, or the owner of a small company taking on the CPA role to cut costs. People are stressed from wearing multiple hats. We’re starting to see movement toward filling those key positions.”

Thibodeau bought Springborn in June of 2008, just in time for a front-row seat to the unraveling of the financial and housing markets. Her firm specializes in pairing employers with job seekers in the financial services, accounting and other professional services industries. Although it’s been wrenching to see job losses climb statewide, it’s meant a boon for her business, which expects 2010 to beat 2009 revenues by 30%.

According to a nationwide human capital study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, 35% of the thousands of businesses polled in its annual database survey reported increasing staff in 2010, compared with only 16% in 2009. The greatest gain was in the professional, technical and scientific services sector, which reported a 52% uptick in hires over 2009.

That trend is expected to continue as weary executives look for respite from being stretched too thin and companies, facing a backlog of work, look to temporary hires as a hedge against an uncertain economy.

“Temporary sales are up because companies need to get things done,” says Ed McKersie, founder and president of Pro Search in Portland. “I feel good about 2011. I’m starting to see confidence go back up.”

McKersie has been in the staffing industry for 25 years. From that vantage point, he’s seen recessions and recoveries before. Today’s market reflects similar recoveries following other recessions, although he says this time “the slope is steeper, there’s a longer period of uncertainty and the climb back up, slower.

“It’s all part of a cycle,” he says. “People hire depending on the economy.”

He, too, is seeing a spike in hiring. The last two quarters of 2010 provided record revenues for his company, which recruits statewide. The number of direct hires in 2010 nearly doubled that of 2009 and revenues are jumping from temporary hires, as well. McKersie estimates his temporary sales for 2010 are about 25% higher than 2009, “and in our business, you hope it clicks up 10-15%, where it’s been for the last several years.”

Within the temporary hire category, McKersie has been watching a sustained rise in temp-for-hire contracts, where prospective employees are paired with prospective employers for a trial period.

“It provides companies with flexibility to test a new job or an employee,” he says. “It’s a two-way street. Everybody gets to kick the tires here.”

He’s also seeing a surge in temporary hires that are project specific, such as in companies that want an IT upgrade. Businesses can gain a lot of efficiencies by hiring temporary skilled workers to complete a project that frees permanent staff from the extra work and allows the company to bring in a team of experts without incurring permanent employment costs, says McKersie.

No rush

No one, however, is reporting a wholesale ramping up of hiring across the state. In a rash of January forecasts, several Maine-based economists said they expect slow job gains later this year, (See “5 on the future,” Mainebiz, Jan. 10), with momentum gaining over the next three to four years. But it will be 2014 before Maine is close to replacing the 30,000 jobs lost through the recession. As of November 2010, Maine Department of Labor numbers show 645,601 Mainers employed and 50,759 unemployed.

According to state forecasts, most of the job gains will be in health care, education and professional services, although that could change depending on how legislators cut $800 million from the state budget, 80% of which goes to social services and education.

Jeanne Paquette, founder and publisher of Employment Times, a statewide weekly newspaper of help-wanted ads based in Auburn and its online affiliate, MyJobWave.com, says that sort of unknown underscores widespread uncertainty about the economy, which, in turn, is paralyzing executives from committing to new hires.

“It’s been schizophrenic,” she says. “People are ready to place ads, and then they back off. At the beginning of 2010, people were saying, ‘Let’s wait and see what the summer brings.’ Then it was, ‘Wait until after the elections.’ Then, ‘We’ll know more after the holidays.’ Now it’s, ‘Wait until after the new administration has a chance to get settled.’”

The inertia in hiring is causing frustration within companies struggling to ease overloaded existing staff, and among job seekers. Thibodeau predicts once hiring gains momentum, disgruntled workers will look for new opportunities, along with the unemployed.

“At the beginning of the recession, no one was talking about leaving a job … people were just grateful to have one,” says Thibodeau. “But once the market starts to loosen up, those people — the ones who’ve been covering their own job and others — are likely to say, ’I’m out of here’.”

 

Carol Coultas, Mainebiz editor, can be reached at ccoultas@mainebiz.biz.

 

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