Office Visit Report: Nov 14 - Encompass Staffing, Houston, TX.
Well, I made my visit to Encompass today and will try and give a
general walk through of my visit. If you have any specific questions
please feel free to ask!
The office is located about 3 blocks from a major Houston freeway
in the middle of an area of town that is full of office buildings. This
particular area of town, known as the "energy corridor" houses the
major offices for several oil companies and energy related industries.
(Including my company, Aspen Technology) Some companies you
might recognize that have big offices here are: Schlumberger,
Western Atlas International, Exxon, Chevron, Vista Chemical, and BMC.
In other words, I feel that they made an excellent choice in locating
the office where they did... in fact the branch manager said he had
only been there a day before two of the businesses in their building
had given him business cards and said they were interested in getting
temp staffing through them.
The Branch Manager, Chris Trapani, is a great guy and has the kind
of personality that can sell you things without you resenting it. :-)
Previously he was working for himself operating a small executive
recruiting firm when Firamada hired him to manage this office. The
Operations Manager, a really nice lady whose name escapes me, has
20 years experience in the staffing industry both in temp and perm.
Currently they are the only two people working at the office. It is VERY
new... in fact, when I got there Chris was working on assembling some
of the furniture and they were expecting to get their computers today.
The office, I was happy to see, was not overly large. Often an office
that is just starting will be a huge pretentious thing as people move
forward with unrealistic ideas about getting the business off the ground.
The office is in a very nice building, and IMO, is exactly the right size
given where they are in their development plans... The door opens
into a room that serves as the reception area. Behind the reception
area is a room that will be used for applicant testing, and 3 offices,
for Chris, the Op. Manager, and an account executive they are looking
to hire next week if possible.
As he gave me the "grand tour" around the office I asked him about
his plans for developing the office and making it profitable. He said the
business plan calls for the office to be profitable within 90 days. In this
Sunday's paper they are running 4 ads to try and get a pool of people
for the temp work in office/clerical, accounting, legal, and to hire
an experienced account executive familiar with the industry. That
account executive would them be used in the future (if he/she worked
out) as the manager over future account execs as the business grew.
They planned to have just the 3 of them apart from the temp pool until
the office became profitable and woudl then expand from there.
Chris said what typically happens in this kind of start up office is that
the ads will go out and they will spend next week reviewing applicants
to see what kind of labor pool they get. He said it is very important
not just to find warm bodies but to find high quality, skilled people
because the company's reputation is riding on them. Their initial focus
for the office will then be placing people in the area that they find the
most qualified people, with the idea of expanding as it was possible
without affecting the profitability of the office. He said that the temp pool
was the key to starting, since it can ruin a company's reputation very
quickly is asked to fill positions and they couldn't find quality people
to fill them, so getting such a temp pool is the top priority.
He said the real gravy in this business isn't the temp staffing though.
The best profits are from executive placement and other kinds of
perm. placement because they can make money without having to
retain any of the people. He said the way to build the business is to
get "your foot in the door" of a company through the temp staffing,
and then when they know you and are comfortable they start using
you for permanent placement and executive talent searches.
On question I asked was whether or not any of Firamada's national
contracts with some of their clients would give them some business
right off the starting line without them having to work for it. He said
he believed they would start out with several clients based on Firamada's
contracts but he would not comment on who -- only that several companies
had been contacted by the corporate office to try and secure some
immediate business for this office. He said that they are not counting
on any of these though in their attempts to get profitable in 90 days.
Anyway, got to run and I'll post more later if I think of it. I was VERY
impressed though!! |
