by Beth Fitzgerald
Originally posted on NJBIZ.com - July 17, 2010
When JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon addressed a June meeting of the bank’s small-business clients, he asked attendees about hiring trends.
“I travel all around America, and a year and a half ago, everyone was cutting head count,” he said. “Now, 50 percent are hiring. That is an anecdote, but I think it’s one that shows the country is starting [to] grow a little bit.”
One New Jersey staffing firm is advising business owners who like their temporary hires to bring them on board immediately, lest they be hired by a competitor.
Around New Jersey, employers, staffing firms and consultants say they’re seeing that growth beginning to take root.
The founder of Electronic Office Systems, of Fairfield, said he’s on the lookout for high-performing salespeople and technicians.
“We do constant interviewing on a regular basis, because we’re always looking for people — experienced salespeople or people with the personality profile to be good at sales,” said Andrew Ritschel.
A decline in sales in 2007 led the company, which leases and services office equipment to more than 4,000 businesses, to reduce its work force from 52 to 40, but now the company is far more profitable, Ritschel said, allowing it to begin rebuilding staffing levels.
“Hiring people is the most critical thing I do — it makes a huge contribution or detriment to my bottom line,” said Ritschel, who founded the company 27 years ago. It can take between three and six months to learn if a new salesperson will produce, he added.
Meanwhile, the staffing company Snelling, in Eatontown, has seen its business rise 10 percent each week since Memorial Day, said Koleen Singerline, senior vice president. “I’m hearing from people I haven’t heard from for a year or two — and I’m hearing from people who have never used an [employment] agency before,” she said.
Standard practice, Singerline said, is temp-to-hire, with Snelling supplying temporary workers for 13 weeks while the employer decides whether or not to hire them. “But now we’re telling our employers, if you like someone, put them on your payroll” right away, Singerline said. The job market “seems to have flipped. If you find a really good person, you need to hire them — because they will not stay around forever.”
Debra A. Taeschler is the CEO of GraficaGroup, an advertising agency in Chester, which she founded 25 years ago; clients include Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey and PSE&G. Hiring is a nonstop process because, with the advent of digital marketing and social media, “a lot of new skills are required,” she said. “Trying to find the people with the right expertise means searching for people to hire 24/7, until you hit the nail on the head and find what you are looking for.” The agency has 28 employees, plus a number of contract professionals.
Grafica’s Chester location is a bit remote, making it more difficult to recruit talent, so Taeschler is considering a move to a municipality with train service so she can more easily recruit from Hoboken, Jersey City and New York. “You want people to collaborate, and you need them to be in-house,” she said.
A high priority for Taeschler is keeping good people once she finds them, “and we have to be flexible,” she said. “You have to find the things you can do that mean something to people, like flexible schedules. When I started working, if you clocked in one minute late, you got docked. There was no latitude, nothing like what we have now.”
For some companies, though, the start of the recession didn’t signal the end of recruiting talent. Eatontown-based Empire Technologies, for instance, “never stopped hiring,” despite the downturn, said Susan Van Brunt, director of human resources. The company, which is changing its name to NACR following its acquisition in December, sells and services telecommunications systems to businesses.
“Even in a down economy, you always need phones,” she said. “Our customers, even though the economy slows down, still need to upgrade or get new phone systems to keep up with changing technology.”
The company’s work force numbers 160 — nearly double its 2006 roster, Van Brunt said. Among its clients is Villanova University, in Radnor, Pa., she said: “We rewired the entire university for data and phone service,” she said. To accommodate its growth, the company moved from a smaller facility in Freehold to its Eatontown home in October.
E-mail to bfitzgerald@njbiz.com