South Shore Insider:
By KAITLIN KEANE
The Patriot Ledger
Aug. 2, 2006
QUINCY - Since
founding Microtech Staffing Group in 1985 to find temp workers for
high-tech companies in Massachusetts, Joseph Donahue has learned that
the company’s success depends on its ability to expand its target
market.
For the Quincy-based
provider of temporary employment, that has meant keeping pace with
a changing job market by expanding beyond the high-tech industry to
include growing sectors like health care and higher education.
With $35 million
in annual sales and offices in Quincy, Medway, Woburn, Danvers, Londonderry,
N.H., and Miami, Microtech now coordinates more than 1,300 temporary
employees, Donahue said. About 30 employees directly employed by Microtech
work under Donahue, a 50-year-old Hingham resident, at the company’s
offices.
What factors have
changed the temporary staffing industry in Massachusetts?
People leaving
the state. The (number of people) in Massachusetts has not changed,
but with every recession since I’ve been here, 100,000 middle
class residents leave the state and don’t come back. And they’ve
been replaced by a lot of immigrant labor. As a result, a lot of the
middle jobs have disappeared and shrunk. High-end salaries mean more
service people, whereas the middle class doesn’t put that much
demand on the services. That has driven (the demand for) a lot of
major services positions.
Do you still fill
a lot of high-tech positions?
Well, high-tech
has definitely changed. High-tech jobs are shrinking up here, and
there are a lot that have been outsourced to other regions. We had
a Y2K problem that kept everyone busy, then we went into a recession,
then 9/11 pushed more out. Then I think when people raised their heads,
a lot of the tech jobs had moved elsewhere.
Also, the productivity
of technology has replaced some temp jobs. We used to have a big drafting
business at one time. With software tools like AutoCAD, actual physical
drafting is completely gone. And with word processing and programs
like Outlook, people are basically their own administrators.
What new types
of industries have you expanded to include?
Now we are getting
more into office and administration (jobs in) downtown Boston. We
moved our headquarters from Waltham to Quincy two years ago to reach
out to the Boston jobs and be near the T. I believe the education
sector, the health care sector and financial services are all going
to be strong players in this region for a long time.
How else do you
plan to expand to keep up with in-demand industries?
In Massachusetts,
real estate costs have gone through the roof, health care costs are
(the highest) in the country and you have companies that can’t
afford to be here. We opened an office in Miami and there’s
a lot of service and distribution down there because of goods and
services from South America coming through.
A lot of companies
want to get geographically diverse. The problem is most of them aren’t
choosing to be diverse here because of the high cost of being here.
So we are adding on to the Quincy office and looking at some out-of-state
expansion in places like Atlanta, Florida, Chicago.
How do the industries
that need temps differ in Boston and on the South Shore?
The suburbs of
the South Shore have a lot of positions that involve sales and marketing,
finance and accounting and distribution, but very little manufacturing.
In Boston, financial services are in a transition now. There, we place
more in accounting or law firms. ...- In the education sector, we
put service people in universities in administration jobs and IT jobs.
And university events need catering staff.
Have Internet
services such as Monster.com taken business away from temp agencies?
No, it’s
just another vehicle. It really affected the permanent placement business
more than the temp business. The Internet is just a tool to help recruit.
You’ve still got to screen the people. It’s like an online
dating service: Everyone looks great on paper but you still have to
screen them.
Are there any
factors that have helped the temp business in recent years?
Health care costs
are driving temporary demand because (businesses) don’t have
to pay health care costs for temporary employees. That’s good
for business, but not necessarily a good thing for the people that
work here.
The only good
thing is that they do wind up hiring a good percentage of my people.
It’s good for them because they get hired from temporary to
permanent, and it’s good for the company because they get a
good look at them for a longer period of time than an interview.
Are there any
benefits to being a temporary employee?
There is a social
aspect of it that’s good. For example, at one time, temp help
was a good way to let the Vietnamese community in Quincy get access
to jobs they never would’ve gotten. At one point, I dealt a
lot with the Cambodian community up in Lowell. They weren’t
in any of these companies, and we were one of the first to put them
in there.
