Finding good employees has always been difficult. In today's tight employment market it's even harder than ever. There just aren't enough qualified people around to do the work. That's the picture of the market in general. In the Internet world it's even worse.

You don't need to talk very long to a developer, ISP owner/manager or anybody in charge at a network company to know, in the burgeoning field of Internet professionals, the peoplepower shortage is almost getting worse daily.

The world's interest in the World Wide Web is really less than three years old. While there were people working on building web pages in 1996, there were certainly enough of to go around. Three years later it's not quite the same. There are still plenty of people working on web related activities but the need far outstrips the available workforce. Primarily because, while anyone can build a web page, not everyone can build a good one. Besides aesthetics there is also functionality. Today people expect their web sites to perform tasks never before asked of any medium.

In the past media was expected to do a single task like attract people to your store or tell people about your company whereupon they would come in and an employee would make a sale. Today organizations expect their web site to do all of those things. Some web sites do, many organizations do. For those expectations to be fulfilled a site needs to be built by people who understand what visitors want, executed by people who know how the technology works and maintained by people who care. In has been done, it is being done, but it's not easy. It needs people to make it happen and the people aren't there.

Web professionals are in a rare position today, there are probably more companies trying to but their expertise and services than there are people who can do it. So how does a company go about finding those people? They can call WebStaff (http://www.webstaff.com) a staffing agency that ONLY hires Internet professionals. Just launched this month iBiz talked to WebStaff Assignment Managers Kirsten Bridge and mark Hoffman about their agency, their service and their perception of the market.

IBIZ: Where did WebStaff come from?

Bridge: MacTemps has been around for over ten years. We're always looking to grow and expand into the next marketplace. A lot of research was put into what that could be and would be. The research identified the web as that market. So WebStaff was launched in other markets last year (1998) both nationally and internationally. It has proved successful and now we've launched it here.

That's where it came from. It's definitely a division of MacTemps and was the first web specific staffing agency. There's a lot of interest in watching how it grows and what's going to happen with it. A lot of the interest is because of the business interest in the web itself right now. Everybody's kind of watching to see what will happen.

Hoffman: This month is our launch here in Minneapolis. We're on basically two tracks right now, and they're accelerated tracks. The first is to add to our talent pool, which already has some Web professionals in it. The second is to get the message out to a broader base of clients.

IBIZ: Can you be more specific about the kind of talent you're looking for?

MH: In terms of the talent, it's seen as breaking into 3 characteristics or profiles. It can sometimes do work in all three but it's seen as a good way to break down the work. The first is the content side of the business, which are individuals that can develop web pages in HTML. DHTML, can do some image work. Fairly straightforward web site development.

The middle group is a programming group. Individuals who can do more sophisticated web site development but also have a leg in the network and true technical side of the business. Those people who can make the Internet or Intranet play well within the entire organization.

The third group is made up of site strategists, fairly high level. Someone who can see the short time and long term vision the organization has in its initiatives. A person who can then design a site that can be developed in stages, serving the short term but really designed for the long term initiatives. The talent we have can land in any of those three areas.

We can help organizations in the conceptual stage. We can help organizations who need a site doctor. Those who have a site but it's not quite right, we have people who can fix it up. If there are people who just need a site period, they just need a presence, we can do that as well.

The talent is there to do all three. I think almost every organization, small or large, is suffering in various degrees from the talent gap out there. It's no different in the new technologies.

IBIZ: Has this caused you to solicit new people for your talent pool?

KB: There are some new people but one of the interesting things about web work, and one of the reasons WebStaff can be successful as a MacTemps division, is that we do already have web talent. MacTemps has been doing web placements. We're just noticing there's probably a bigger niche out there than we've been exploiting. Some of our existing talent is definitely able to do some web work. The same thing with the clients.

MacTemps, perhaps like all staffing agencies, has been doing web placements. With WebStaff we're just trying to grab more of that work. WebStaff is focused on building that.

IBIZ: What's been the response? Is there more interest for one of the three areas of talent than the other?

MH: I think a lot depends upon the organization you're dealing with.

KB: And the market.

MH: Intranets are now probably the fastest growing initiative within organizations. Reducing paper, improving communication between remote divisions, the things Intranets do are becoming a big deal. I don't know if eCommerce, as the public understands it like the amazon.com kind of thing, is at the stage where large organizations are necessarily going with it.

I think extranets are growing. People don't think about them because you don't see them because they are private communication between organizations, between a company and it's suppliers or it's clients. You don't hear much talk about extranets but there's an enormous amount of paper work, communications and logistics between companies. Many companies that have been doing EDI are converting to some form of extranet as a cheaper faster way of communicating with each other.

If you divide it into the two tracks we're on, the talent pool and the client base, web talent tends to want to be on the edge of things, working with the newest applications, etc. What we offer them is an entry into a wider variety of organizations. A wider variety of web initiatives at various stages from zero to the site doctor kind of thing. We're simply bringing in focused talent at the right time for that organization.

They're coming in doing to the work, concepting through production, then they're moving on. They're always there to go back in again but a part of their purpose is to provide a little bit of self-sufficiency after the site's up. Then some of their internal talent can take over and work with the site. But we're always there in the background if they need it.

KB: A different angle on that same question might be in where we're finding the clients having a need during the past year. What's happening is the Web is changing so much everyday that we are obviously flowing with that in the sense that a lot of times the Graphics or communications department has been handling the web. Sometimes the IT department. They haven't really had anyone in place to be doing it. They've all been trying to do it as a, and sometimes not as important, part of their existing workload. Now I think we're seeing, even within as short a time as a year, more and more knowledge about the web and more and more people saying, "No thanks, I want to get back to print, or whatever." It's neat, it was a new thing, but it's too much. You can't do everything and be an expert in it all.

What we're seeing more and more is a need for a number of different things. Before it might have been, "Well the designers just don't know HTML." So we might have placed a lot of HTML coders just to execute. But that doesn't mean they were always making great Web sites. So we're seeing things evolve.

Where we're seeing the client need is also evolving. I think the whole Web thing is evolving as we speak and we're seeing both our clients and our client's needs changing all the time too.

IBIZ: Are you getting requests solely form organizations them selves or are a part of your requests coming from design or communications companies without much depth in Web expertise?

KB: Yes. Those are our clients as much as corporations or other organizations.

MH: They're definitely a part of our client base.

KB: That would be the same for MacTemps too. Yes that happens too. We are sometimes going to do work for the communications department of ABC Corporation and we are going to do work for the Agency of ABC Corporation. It's whoever has the need for that project help. They tend to be totally different projects. ABC could be a huge corporation that really farms out everything to their agency and what we were doing on site could be dramatically smaller than what we'd be doing with the agency.

IBIZ: How do you understand your relationship with your clients? Do you come in do the job and go? Or do you consider your relationship as an ongoing one?

MH: Once we make contact with a customer we like to work with them on an ongoing basis. Whether we're coming in at the beginning of an initiative or later once the project has been going on for awhile. As the site winds up, once they have some experience with it and realize they need to make some changes. Whether they want to add things or their getting response that aren't quite right, we will send the same person or team back in again because they're familiar with the site and the owners business. That familiarity is important.

RRR How long do your Web projects usually run? Is it, "come in for two weeks fix it and go away" or is it more long term?

KB: We have noticed a longer duration than a typical staffing order. It probably goes more towards the technical world of the staffing order 'cause the technical or contractors tend to work many more months than maybe somebody who's doing other forms of staffing, be it the production artist or the graphic designer.

MH: The problem with the Web, unlike another temporary talent who may go in and work on a print piece. The concept for the print piece has probably already been established before that person walks through the door. They're just there to execute the concept. The Web is becoming so entangled (pardon the pun) in everything, becoming so much a part of all the parts of an organization; I mean, HR might get involved, Legal might get involved, certainly Marketing and Sales gets involved, and IT gets involved. So what you see now is Webmasters overseeing a team of individuals from across the organization.

One particular client has what they call a Web Team. It's comprised of Manufacturing, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, HR and Corporate Communications. They have seven members on the team. With that in mind, that you're working with a team, more than likely no one is going to be pulling in the same direction, so a Web initiative will tend to be longer because it has its hooks into so many things within the organization. So I think the assignments are going to be longer.

But there are also going to be those assignments where the talent comes in, sits down with the individual and works through a page concept. Then the talent gets it done and walks away. We know that they're probably going to want the Web site to grow and they're going to call us back in again.

IBIZ: One of the important things is what happens after the site is there. Can you supply talent to help your clients make the most of what the have on the Web?

KB: Definitely

MH: I call it the site doctor. Everyone has the best intentions when the do something. When they put a site up there, whether it's to communicate with their client, their customers, maybe their suppliers, and it's not quite doing the job, maybe because of resources, or it's not quite there and something isn't quite right we have talent in place that can go in. They can do a complete A to Z evaluation and then fix what's wrong.

IBIZ: The dynamics of the Web works in your favor on that one.

KB: Because the process is not worked out yet.

IBIZ: Do you think that corporations understand that whatever they do now they're going to have to do again?

MH: I think there was some thinking three or four years ago that you could put a site up and it would be similar to a corporate report, an annual report, which means a year or so later we're going to have to revisit it. Well most corporations have come to the realization that that's not going to get it. I think a lot of that has to do with the pace of change, the technologies available and people's perceptions of the web. I mean, the Web is now, I want it now, and the system has to accommodate that.

In '97 I did some research on Web sites in the twin Cities. I viewed about two hundred of them, major corporations, mid-size, the whole works. I was trying to get a snapshot of the Twin Cities. What I came to understand that about 17% of the sites were doing eCommerce. Which means some kind of transactions via the Web. Which was about 12 points ahead, and you have to remember this was a year ago, at that point we were about 12 points ahead of the nation as a whole. What that means is local organizations tend to be ahead of the national curve even though Minnesota's always thought of being a little bit behind or a little bit conservative. So they're a little bit ahead but I think they're a lot quieter about it than maybe the East or West Coast might be.

Once the hype of the Internet was blown away by the realities of the Internet it seemed to get very quiet. I think it got very quiet for two reasons. First, organizations were doing things and didn't want to broadcast they were doing them. Secondly, I think the Y2K issue is handcuffing, to various degrees, many organizations willingness to do more technological advanced initiatives. Either it's resources in terms of money or it's resources in terms of people. That's the part of the equation we're going after.

IBIZ: Have you thought of that (the Y2K problem) as a potential market for your services?

KB: No we haven't considered that for our business, no.

MH: the company I was with previously has lot of exposure to the network side and Y2K was there all the time. That was the question that was always asked, "Why aren't you focusing on Y2K?" The answer I always got, and after a time they started making sense. First of all, "it's not going to be around that much longer." Everybody thinks that after January 1, 2000, it's going to go away. The predictions are that the Y2K problem is going to hang around and the necessity to work in those affected legacy systems will be around for three or four years afterwards. Maybe as late as 2005. For organizations looking for people to work in COBOL, for example. Their expectations are they will bring people in, have them work and then let them go. To get people up to speed in COBOL today you have to train them and nobody's willing to make that investment in something that's going to go away.

KB: I think from a staffing point of view it was not an attractive way to go because then you're becoming an IT staffing firm. We are doing Web work but we've looked at it (Y2K) and it's not a niche of much interest to us.

IBIZ: Speaking of niches, you're called Mac Temps. The Macintosh platform is associated with design, printing and other intensely graphic/image oriented businesses. The web is not that way so is this a switch for you?

KB: Mac Temps, because of the growing PC world, has been doing Windows stuff for years and years. So we've been doing Windows jobs for many years. Even graphics departments, especially in large consulting firms, they're all PC, even for their graphics. We had to include Windows a long time ago. Those are the same companies who have a need for other things.

MH: Another thing is the talent's skills requirements are like the Web, they're cross platform. HTML, DHTML, VRML, Java, they're all cross platform.

KB: Generally we recruit dual platform candidates across the board no matter what the focus is.

MH: Having the talent be able to connect with the delivery side of the business, the network side, is the other part we can do. I can remember two years ago, talking to a network staff, I can remember one person, I was talking about the Internet. She stood back and went like this (Mark holds up his crossed forefingers in protection from the evil eye. We all laugh.) She said, "I don't want to talk about the Internet. Don't talk to me about it I'm already buried up to my eyeballs." I think that's going to change wherever it's not already changed. This (the Internet) is a vital business and companies are going to have to move on it.

IBIZ: In the clients you have contacted, as well as the ones who have contacted you, are you getting more Internet or Intranet inquiries?

KB: I think Internet.

MH: Yeah.

KB: In doing the rollout and in the investigation stage for this market, it's been primarily Internet. However a lot of people feel it's just so new and a lot of people are just working it out. So when you say, Intranet people automatically think Internet. They don't really perceive them as different. People automatically think Internet but there's probably an Intranet need there too. But I think right there, served to us, is the Internet.

MH: I think, based on my previous background, and on what I've been bumping into here, large organizations are looking at both. I hope someday the World Wide Consortium comes up with some terminology that differentiates these better. So Internet means the same thing to everybody. When you're talking to people Internet can mean Internet, Intranet, Extranet, EDI. It can mean all kinds of things. As I define it Intranet means internal and I think large organizations, the Fortune 1,000, are probably looking at, are potentially looking at, all three, Inter, Intra and Extra. The mid-size organizations are probably looking at Internet, which means ways of more effectively communicating with customers. The creative agencies are obviously serving all three but a lot of creative agencies, from what I can tell, are serving the site strategy side of the equation and that ends up being the Internet.

IBIZ: It seems sometimes the agencies are more concerned with the "look/feel" and don't want to be concerned with the actual running of the site.

KB: I think it depends on the agency and how much Web they've been doing. Again some of that is, do you have your print designers rolling into Web work? Or do you have a firm that's actually focusing on Multimedia and the Web and understanding how to use that for marketing communications and all that? So it depends on what agency you're using.

I think it also depends on whom you're talking to within a company. Sometimes it's how we're going about getting the business. Sometimes that person, or a person who's calling us, someone we haven't even solicited, sometimes that person doesn't understand what Mark just defined as the difference between Inter and Intra. They might know what the Internet is but if Mark explained that to them it might be the first time they ever understood the words themselves. Often we're finding that within these companies it's not a person with the same title who understands. In fact a lot of the time you have to dig around to find out who is doing it. Who is in charge.

MH: One of the things you find is there is an idea that the Web is a pretty picture, I'm not trying to demean that, good interface design, good site strategy is important, but there's someone in the corner office saying, "Where is the ROI?" That's why organizations are looking at the less pretty parts as a place to start cutting costs. Intranets to start eliminating paper, Extranets for sending invoices and POs back and forth. For us that's an untouched area.

When you start talking Intranets you start talking about everyone having access to things. You're talking about everyone having access to everything at his or her desk. That person has to work with the company systems and that's where the pretty picture, good user interface, is important. The big neon sign is the web site people on the outside can go to, whether its Toyota, or Lexus, or whatever. It's the pretty picture, it's the animation it's the interactivity but the money, for organizations, is in the Intranet.

KB: it's been interesting seeing how it all evolves. But the business is fragmented. The same company may be going to their agency to get the look/feel of it and another company for the guts of it, the programming. It's fragmented for companies doing outsourcing because they have to outsource to a bunch of different places for the different needs.

MH: It's a three-legged stool; the content, the programming and the site strategy. Organizations, depending upon their available resources, their direction, the time, whatever, those are the three components they need to concern themselves with. The talent pool we have now can handle all three.

IBIZ: Is your talent pool weighted towards one leg or the other?

MH: The interesting thing is they pretty much go across all three. They may have a personal preference. They may want to do more site strategy but they'll also wink and say, "Y'know I don't have a problem getting my fingers dirty doing HTML coding." So, amazing as it seems, they tend to go all the way across the spectrum. One of them, who's been doing it for five years, told me the other day, "The problem with the recent surge of education for the Web, like MCAD's recent Visual Communications Major, is that they're starting to specialize." He says you may have to do that at some point, but being able to understand, not being able to do all three expertly, but being able to understand those three legs is what's going to make a site successful. Pretty pictures work for awhile but everyone is producing pretty pictures.

KB: I would say, weight wise, we do have more strategists and more of the straight HTML coders. I hate to say this because we are so new in the Twin Cities but we are not seeing much response from the high-end application programmers. While we like to see people who have some knowledge of all three areas it would be crazy if somebody was doing all three legs. It does break down into specialties, just like it does in print. One person doesn't do everything. In the technical high-end programming there's a demand and there's less people for that. That's what we've seen in the people responding to date.

MH: That's across the board, here or in straight technical recruiting. We don't see a lot of people who are experts in CGI, Perl, or some of the other more exotic applications. The interesting thing is that you have two different personalities working on a web site, the concepting part of it and the technical part of it. There are two different mindsets, one is right-brain one is left-brain. High-end technical skill is a shortage everywhere, East Coast, West Coast and here.

IBIZ: When you're being contacted by clients are they primarily new to the web or are they customers who've made attempts and realize they need to do something to fix it?

KB: I'd say both. However I do see them sneaking it into their existing departmental structure. They're not hiring somebody who has a separate designation as a "web person." They're hiring a person as a part of their graphics or communications team who is web focused. The workload is really too much. It really is. It's like Mark said about someone in the IT department swearing off the Internet because they already had too much to do.

People in the graphics and communications departments are saying the same thing, "The web! How can I possibly work that into my day." I think it's a lack of proactive planning for a web department but surrendering to the fact that they have piles of work to do and there's just no way, "So throw somebody at it who can help us do the web." It's still not very well planned out. I would say that overall, in the jobs that we're getting, it's not very well planned out. It's more of just surrender.

IBIZ: How do you think corporations perceive the Web? Do they see it as an economic success story?

MH: I'd say the problem is the success stories for the web are miniscule compared to the absolute abysmal failures that have occurred. But unfortunately corporations, as units see the success of other companies as automatically transferring to their efforts. Then you have individual ordering and buying online and seeing that it can work they see the success stories there too. But they miss the fact that the web is really a customized entity for an organization. It's not like an economic model. You can't replicate it here and here and here. It really does become unique to the organization.

KB: People sometimes think I want it (the success) I see how they did it and they try to jump on the bandwagon but they just haphazardly do it.

IBIZ: But even if you can't duplicate the success of the hot sites that get all the press, like amazon.com or ebay, there are niches where you can demonstrate success on the web.

MH: There is a company down in Winona that I'm familiar with called Fastenal. They have done a remarkable job making their site work for them. Now they're a really well run company but they jumped on the Internet very quickly. They have an EDI link on their site as well as other enhancements. Now you think they just make fasteners for the construction industry why would they jump all over eCommerce but they've done a remarkable job.

KB: Right but any well run company is going to be thinking ahead. It's the difference between Mac Temps and WebStaff. It's obvious any staffing agency can find a need for web talent and say "Oh yeah, we do that too." But instead we've looked at it, captured it and really focused on it wholeheartedly and then made web staffing it's own entity. That's the difference we're talking about, thinking it through and creating something unique.

IBIZ: There sure are people jumping on the bandwagon.

KB: We see that a lot too. Token web people, "You've been on the Internet right. So you do it. And send out for lunch while you're at it." But that's absolutely backfiring for them. But like everything else on the web we're all finding out what's backfiring and what actually works.

IBIZ: Again in dealing with customers or potential customers, are you finding that you need to perform an educational role as well? Teaching them about the web as you go.

KB: Yes probably Mark more so than me.

MH: Yeah. I think it's the fact that it's moving so fast and that people have so many responsibilities. It's hard to find the real kernel of truth in everything. My approach is to help them find their objective and then kind work back from that to find the blocks that keeps them from reaching it. The problem is they see the success other organizations are having with the Internet and because of pressure from everywhere they want it now.

KB: And they don't know how to get there.

MH: So I counsel as much as possible the staged approach to things. If you do it in stages you can identify your mistakes whatever they might be then correct them. It's like tacking into the wind. You're always making minor adjustments. Really it's hard to have them slow down because the pressure is there. But a bad web site, going online and having a site that simply doesn't work is even more damaging than something like printing a bad print piece. It tends to stay in people's minds much longer.

IBIZ: How do you define a bad Web site?

MH: One that's broken, or that has no return appeal.

KB: It's like the neon sign analogy. There's the neon sign hanging up there but why? What does it mean? It's like passing a flyer out on a corner. How many of them make it off the block?

MH: That's why doing the staged approach is important. Stage one might be as simple as pretty picture up there and saying "We're coming." Stage two is interactivity or database access.

IBIZ: Do you guide your Web customers at all with advice on how their site can be successful after it goes up?

KB: I'd like to preclude everything we say with a disclaimer. We are the staffing people not the consultants people might hire through us. What we might say about this is totally an opinion, not professional web marketing advice. We aren't the people we would send out to help a client with this issue.

IBIZ: I think this kind of goes hand-in-hand with the education issue. I was talking to a friend about this issue and she said she talks to people all the time who've heard about the Internet and they want to be "on it." That's it, that's as far as they go.

KB: We hear that too. What they don't understand when they say they want it all, is that means they want five people. Whether that's five at once or three people to start and two people to come in later. We educate them that way but it gets down to a very basis level as we mentioned earlier, defining the basic vocabulary of the business. Once we're there, then we try to help them understand how to execute a project. For instance, our "Price and Skills Guide" helps them understand where someone begins and finishes their part of the project. This person does this much and then passes it on to this person. So there's definitely a need for education on every level.

MH: With our mission we tend not to get in on an organization's strategic initiatives. The hope is by the time we're brought in, at least, the focus or the objectives of the site have been ironed out to the point where one of our site strategist can understand the objective of the site and then get on to it.

KB: Our focus, in fact our mission statement is, to focus on the independent professional. A lot of our staging is to help our independent professional go in and do a successful job. If they want one person who can do it all we're sending someone into a nightmare. We want to stay focussed on creating successes for the client, the talent and WebStaff.

 iBiz