CEO’s Corner: Steve Emerson
Okay, now that baseball season is finally officially over I can get down to the business at hand, which is writing these words of wisdom for our much overdue newsletter, so here goes… If you’re like me, you attend a lot of networking events, spend a lot of time on the telephone and are generally in constant contact with many different people on any given business day. Perhaps the most commonly asked question at the beginning of these interactions is “how’s business?” I believe that many times a question is asked almost as a greeting as in “how are you doing?” or “how was your weekend?” However, over the past year or two as the economy has weathered an extremely tough recession the question “how’s business?” has taken on a whole new flavor and meaning. People ask the question with a whole new level of sincerity and concern, and people think long and hard before they answer the question, in fact the answer usually comes after a long and heavy sigh. And then the answer itself can range anywhere from “great” to “brutal”.
Although Emerson Personnel Group is exposed to many different types of industry and literally hundreds of companies producing various services and products what we know best is staffing and recruiting. So when someone asks me “how’s business?” it is primarily staffing and recruiting that I feel most qualified to comment on. And fortunately, over the past 4 to 6 months I’ve been able to answer the question with an unqualified “better, and steadily improving”. This should be very exciting news for the economy as a whole since, historically, the staffing and recruiting industry has served as an excellent early indicator for economic conditions whether they be improving or declining. Typically, an improvement in the staffing and recruiting industry has a lead time of approximately 6 months for the overall economic climate. This is good news!
As we emerge from the recession, which by the way has been the longest and deepest since the founding of Emerson Personnel Group in 1971, we initially see companies calling for temporary administrative personnel. Over time the staffing needs begin to morph into temp to hire opportunities and contract positions. Finally, toward the tail end of the recession we have documented previously an increased demand for executive search and direct hire positions. At this point, here at EPG we have noticed a significant increase from our client companies for high-quality temporary administrative personnel. So, if history repeats itself we should be on track for an overall, albeit slow improvement across industries. It may be a little rocky, with a few ups and downs but at least we will be on the right track.
I think I wrote in a previous column how much we love the South Jersey business community, and how impressed we continue to be with the toughness and resilience of the people we work with everyday of the week. It has been very difficult to see companies and people for whom we have the highest respect going through such tough times and being forced to make extremely difficult decisions such as laying off good people and cutting their resources to the bone. We’ve seen a lot of good companies go out of business over the past couple of years and there are lot of excellent people out of work. So you can imagine how good it feels for me to be able to write about some light at the end of the tunnel. At this point it may just be a flashlight at the end of the tunnel but I firmly believe that the light will grow into an eventual sunburst of activity and prosperity. So the next time someone asks you “how’s business?” hopefully you’ll be able to answer the way I have been lately… “better, and steadily improving”.