Microtech flourishes under Waltham native
By Carrie Simmons/ Daily News Staff
Thursday,
January 12, 2006
WALTHAM -- A local
entrepreneur who started his business in his mother’s basement
recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of his multi-million company.
Joseph Donahue
started Microtech Staffing Group in December 1985 and ran the fledgling
business out of Peg Donahue’s basement for a year-and-a-half
before opening an office on Weston Street.
Faced with competition
from established firms like Manpower and Kelly Services Inc., Donahue
carved out a niche in the then untapped high-tech industry, placing
temporary workers in engineering, manufacturing and distribution jobs.
He ended his first
year of business with a net profit of only $600 but continued to acquire
clients like EMC and generated $500,000 in sales within two years.
By 1992, he hit the $1 million mark.
Microtech grew
steadily through the dot-com boom during the late-1990s and diversified
to other markets like the medical devices sector after the dot-com
bust in 2000.
Still, requests
for temporary help declined sharply with the 2001 recession.
"Temporaries
are always first to go so we dried up for a period of time,"
Donahue said. "Just as we were about to turn the corner, 9/11
happened."
Microtech survived
by providing good customer service and expanding its base of customers,
Donahue said. And, while other businesses were closing its doors or
were bought out -- including clients like Data General, Wang and Digital
-- he doubled his account base and added a few offices to try to grow
through the recession.
"A good defense
is a good offense," he said.
A Waltham native,
Donahue attended Waltham public schools until the ninth grade. He
graduated from Boston College High School in 1974 and went on to earn
a degree from Boston College.
Donahue worked
as an operations manager at Honeywell, eventually pursuing an MBA
at Babson College, and stepped out on his own in 1985.
Microtech was
headquartered on Weston Street for 18 years. Donahue’s mother,
Peg, took care of accounting and billing right up until her death
in April 2004.
"She was
the big boss," Donahue said.
After her death,
he moved Microtech’s headquarters to Quincy. Donahue and his
wife, Elizabeth, moved from Waltham to Hingham 10 years ago.
With offices in
Medway, Woburn, Danvers, Londonderry, New Hampshire and Miami, Fla.,
Microtech now places about 1,200 temporary employees a day, generates
$35 million a year in sales and is the second-largest privately owned
temporary employment agency in New England.
After growing
through the "anemic" recovery from the 2001 recession and
the exodus of high-tech jobs in Massachusetts, Donahue is diversifying
again and placing temporary employees in accounting, education, health
care and financial services.
"He is a
brilliant businessman and a natural leader who possesses an innate
business sense that goes beyond our specific industry," said
James Fennessy, a longtime employee of Donahue’s. "I have
learned more from him than from all of my undergrad and MBA studies."
Donahue is planning
to add more offices in Worcester, Rhode Island, the Boston-Cambridge
area and Florida, where 300,000 jobs were created in 2004, he said,
compared to 4,000 jobs in Massachusetts.
The market for
temporary employees is only growing, Donahue said.
"The jobs
are becoming more permanently temporary," he said. "Because
of health care costs companies are embracing that as a work strategy."
Donahue is proud
that one-third of Microtech’s temporary employees land permanent
employment. Four of his former temps who he placed permanently at
EMC 20 years ago are now millionaires.
Donahue jokes
that they don’t always pay for lunch when he visits the Hopkinton
company.
"They forget
about when they were temporaries," he said.
