A Search Firm for the Small Fry
By Julie Fishman-Lapin
Staff Writer
Reprinted from the Stamford Advocate 2/11/04
For a small business professional,
hiring someone new or replacing someone who left can be a burden.
People who work for small businesses usually wear more than one
hat when it comes to their job responsibilities. If a co-worker leaves,
the person left behind suddenly inherits the work, which doesn't
leave much time to fill the vacant position, said David Lewis, founder
and president of OperationsInc.com, a Stamford-based human resource
and operational consulting firm.
Writing and placing job advertisements, filtering resumes, and conducting
interviews and background searches can be a hassle, said Lewis, who
recently launched a new service that helps small and medium-size
businesses manage the task of hiring.
Three years ago, when Lewis formed OperationsInc, he had wanted
to provide recruitment management outsourcing to his clients, he
said. However, the timing, wasn't right. With the job market so slow,
there was little demand for such a service.
But as the economy has picked up, more businesses are beefing up
their work force. And Lewis is poised to help.
Lewis carved a niche for himself helping
small to mid-size businesses deal with human resources and operational
issues. Over the past three years he has assembled a team of contractors
with varying specialties, including recruitment. Together "we look like a HR department
for a 1,000-person company," he said.
And that's what Active Health Management needed when the Manhattan-based
business was looking to hire 40 people in a short period of time.
The health care management firm hired OperationsInc in November to
manage the process, said Jim Starr, the company's executive vice
president and chief financial officer.
Active Health Management has a small human-resources department,
and Starr said the company needed someone to come in and organize
the process and focus solely on recruitment to meet a Jan. 1 hiring
deadline. Outsourcing was the best option, he said.
Businesses have three options when it comes to hiring, Lewis said.
The first is to handle this process internally, which involves substantial
time and effort.
The second option is to hire a search firm. But that can be expensive,
because agencies ask for 20 percent to 25 percent of the a new hire's
first-year salary, Lewis said.
The third option is outsourcing. OperationsInc charges clients by
the hour, not by a percentage of the hire's salary. Lewis said OperationsInc
can manage the entire recruitment process or take over specific aspects.
A corporation such as IBM has unlimited resources to hire people,
but for a small company, OperationsInc offers an affordable service,
said Rob Houghton, a partner with Creative Benefit Planning, a 10-person
Stamford consulting and insurance brokerage firm.
Houghton recently hired OperationsInc to
facilitate a job search. The cost of hiring a search firm was prohibitive,
he said. But the firm's partners needed help. "The three of us didn't have the
desire or time to do it," he said.
OperationsInc screened the candidates, conducted the initial interviews
and found the firm a new employee, Houghton said.
