An Employment Agency Seizes the Day

Barbara Davis Employment Service takes the work out of matching new hires with employers.

Though she was not playing with the high rollers in Atlantic City, Barbara Davis decided to do some gambling in 1987. Taking out a line of credit with her house as collateral, she set out to become a business owner. Every savvy entrepreneur sets goals, and Davis has a big one in mind. She wanted to make a successful return on her venture, the Barbara Davis Employment Service in Morristown, within six months.

Some eleven years later, the gamble seems to have paid off. Davis reports that her company saw a 40% increase in revenues in 1997 over the previous year, has a staff of six and opened a second office in Freehold in January.

Business experts often advise that aspiring entrepreneurs focus on their strengths. Prior to starting her own business, Davis had been a placement director for the Katharine Gibbs School in Piscataway. She had the chance to work in the Manhattan area as the coordinator for the eleven locations in the Katherine Gibbs School network. The two-hour commute from Southern New Jersey, however, was quite a trek. Tapping into the connections she had made from placing business school graduates with employers, she started Barbara Daivs Employment Services in Morristown in 1987. She move the company closer to home in Red Bank in November 1996.

Davis knew better than to try to launch a new business alone. She sought plenty of outside help to plan her venture. "I met with financial advisors, an attorney, the chamber of commerce, the New Jersey Association of Women Business Owners and the Monmouth-Ocean Development Council," she recalls.

The original focus of Davis' agency was to handle permanent job placements, but the recession of the late 1980s prompted her to also start a temporary-placements division, BD Temps. Downsizing began in earnest, and employers became more interested in temporary hires. This trend continues today. Last year, Davis placed approximately 400 candidates with some form of employment-particularly data entry, special projects and seasonal work. Of the agency's placements, 80% are temporary. The remainder are temp-to-hire, meaning they are hired for temporary work, and later become permanent employees.

In an effort to work with a steady stream of employment hopefuls, Davis maintains relations with business schools like Katherine Gibbs Schools and the Stuart School in Wall. Other prospective hires include women who left the workforce to have children, and people looking for new job opportunities.

While the job market in New Jersey has improved over the past few years, temporary placements have likewise increased, in the large part due to the trend of companies cutting costs by outsourcing services. According to the New Jersey Department of Labor, the state had 78,100 new jobs as of last December. That number is up from 59,700 new jobs in 1996. Preliminary reports from January show that about 81,100 people are employed in the personnel-supply industry, which includes security-guard services, outsourcing firms and temp agencies, like BD Temps. The personnel-supply industry has grown from 64,500 in 1995 and 72,200 in 1996.

Those statistics are good news for Davis and the countless other employment firms in her very competitive fields. For Davis, helping others to build their careers has proven both profitable and enjoyable. "It's a good feeling to have when you go home every day," she says.

From: Business News NJ, February 23, 1998, by: Joao-Pierre S. Ruth.