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Nelson Staffing Solutions Opens New Office
By William Cracraft
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With the snip of a pair of giant wooden scissors, Nelson Staffing Solutions officially opened its Fremont office. Attendees included Mark Nelson, President, and COO for Nelson Human Resource Solutions, the parent company.
The ceremony, held Wednesday, marked the opening of the 15th Nelson Staffing Solutions office in Northern California. To get a toe-hold in Fremont, Nelson acquired Advantage Plus Personnel from owner Angela Johal last November, then hired her back as branch manager.
"We retained all three members of the staff and brought one of our recruiters from San Jose over so we have four people here and it’s been great. We’ve been lucky because it has been a wonderful relationship," said Matt Sheehan, a regional vice president with Nelson Staffing Solutions.
The company had been studying the market in Fremont for about a year before buying Johal’s business. With offices in Pleasanton, San Jose and Menlo Park, there was an obvious geographic pocket being overlooked. "We did a market research study that told us there was huge residential growth here, told us there were a lot of R& D (research and development) companies moving in and that this community was becoming an extension of the Silicon Valley," said Sheehan. Good business sense dictated action.
"Our business is highly dependent on skilled people and not just skilled people but people in general that can do a variety of tasks. Fremont was one of those areas we felt was mandatory to be in in order to meet some of those requirements," said Mark Nelson, son of founder Gary Nelson.
"This was a great opportunity. We had trouble locating real estate in the 1000-1500 square foot range in this market. There’s about a one percent vacancy where we were looking," said Sheehan. By chance Sheehan ran across a friend in the staffing business who told him Johal might be interested in selling her business.
"It was a quick deal, it was a nerve-wracking decision. It took about ten days and we did an asset purchase agreement," which sold Nelson the furniture, equipment, accounts receivable and client list of Advantage Plus. Johal feels fortunate to be working in the Nelson system. Nelson Human Resource Solutions is a family of HR companies that cover a spectrum of human resource needs.
Companies include Nelson Staffing Solutions, TechSource, Accountants Plus and Nelson Associates, an executive search company. "We could have somebody from here working as an executive administrative assistant, say, for Sun Micro Systems, and we could have an information software technology person from TechSource and a chief financial officer from Accountants Plus at the same place," said Johal.
The purchase was completed in November and since that time the office has doubled from 30 temp workers on assignment to about 60, said Sheehan, and should bring in revenues of $2-3 million this year. The Fremont office should show a profit sooner than other locations due to the tight job market, said Sheehan, whose territory runs south from Burlingame to deep San Jose then doubles back to Hayward. The area demographics help.
"Since this is a market with more manufacturing placement we will do more volume, we’ll have a higher revenue figure here," he said. It s a little like comparing apples to oranges though. "At the same time Menlo Park and Pleasanton are more white collar markets, so the people will be less in quantity, but higher in revenue scale," Sheehan said.
The toughest part of the business, finding workers, is good news to skilled and trainable workers. "We can’t meet the demand. This area is primarily manufacturing and production with another emphasis on clerical and administrative jobs. San Jose has been tapped out, and Fremont is being tapped out( in terms of) skilled candidates, people who can do the work," said Nelson.
Nelson Human Resource Solutions is a 27-year old company founded by Gary Nelson, Mark’s father. The Sonoma-based company has almost 200 staffers and placed about 15,000 people in temporary or permanent positions in 1997. Nelson Staffing Solutions supplies administrative, data processing and manufacturing and production personnel. Accountants Plus supplies finance and accounting professionals and TechSource engineering and information technology specialists.
ABE Staffing Services is a little outside of Nelson’s main stream business. "We go into major corporations like SGI and Cisco and evaluate, on a case-by-case basis, every single one of their 1099s, their independent contractors. They could be writers, technical people or accountants, and we make a recommendation as to whether they meet the criteria under IRS and other agency guidelines to qualify as independent contractors or are they really employees," said Nelson.
If those hired as contractors come too close to the line of being a regular employee, ABE Staffing becomes the employer, dealing with deducting taxes and providing workman’s compensation and liability insurance, Nelson said. Last year Nelson Staffing Solutions made $90 million of the $120 million revenues of Nelson Human Resource Solutions, said Sheehan.
But its not just about the money, Sheehan is in the business for other reasons. "One is to find the people a job, but a more human objective is to help these people," he said. That seems to be a company philosophy. "People often say, how do you sell that. I don’t look at it that way," said Nelson, son of founder Gary Nelson.
"Every person I meet, we could help someday. We could help them find work, we could help somebody who needs them. You don’t have to look at this as a sales role or as trying to generate business, you have to look at it as having the ability to help people.
"If you have the ability to help people whether you meet them in an elevator at a chamber of commerce meeting, at some point in time they might need your services or you might need their’s, and its a potentially win-win," said Nelson.
After working for Price Waterhouse, Nelson joined his father’s company ten years ago. He founded Accountants Plus, then took over as president of the parent corporation three years ago. His father, chairman, is still active in the company. One of the most rewarding things for Nelson is "the way you get to affect peoples’ lives. Helping find people find employment affects one of the three most important parts of their lives, outside of maybe family and friends," he said.
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