“We were in a situation where we needed someone immediately. The Experienced Resources’ executive came with a breadth of experience and was able to step in right away. There was no learning curve.”

In the News

Experienced Resources, LLC

It's more than a temp firm for older executives

Friday, February 8, 2008

Star Tribune

By Dick Youngblood, Star Tribune

When I retired 10 years ago, I suddenly realized I had only one hobby, which mainly involved hanging around a newsroom and filling white space in tomorrow morning's newspaper.

Fortunately, the boss offered me this one-a-week freelance gig, a gratifying diversion that undoubtedly preserved my sanity and probably saved my marriage.

Now I find I'm not alone in the pursuit of a retirement job, a trend that an entrepreneurial brother-and-sister partnership has translated into a rapidly growing business.

Mary Christensen and Damian Martin are the founders of Experienced Resources, a Bloomington company that grossed $320,000 last year by placing older, well-experienced senior managers and executives in temporary projects and interim management assignments, largely in the health care industry.

Think of it as Rent-A-Geezer Inc., a two-year-old company that the founders expect will top $1 million in revenue this year.

The company puts a rare focus on recruiting and placement of top managers who are in transition from full-time employment.

So far, the company's talent pool totals about 350 people, about 80 percent of them with experience at the vice president, director or administrator level and the rest with a background as CEO, CFO or COO.

They all have at least 20 years' experience and were recruited via relationships with outplacement organizations, connections to networking groups of senior managers in transition, and referrals.

Christensen, 38, and Martin, 44, regard their company not just as a job-placement business, however, but also as a consulting service.

"Obviously, we're a temp company," Christensen said. "But part of our service also involves identifying a client's needs and finding just the right match for those needs."

To hear Barb Daiker tell it, the results can provide the quintessential definition of a win-win situation. Daiker is administrator of Northwest Eye Clinic, a chain of Twin Cities eye-care centers with an organizational structure that was inadequate to handle the company's rapid growth.

Experienced Resources supplied the former senior vice president of human resources at a large insurance services company to work on the problem -- "someone we never could have afforded to hire permanently," Daiker said.

And the outcome was "better than I'd ever imagined," she said. "Our growth had left us with a very complicated HR challenge, and I thought we'd be messing around with it for six to eight months."Instead, the project was finished in four months.

So far, the partners have targeted mainly the health care industry, largely because of Christensen's long experience as an office and human resources manager at several hospitals and clinics. But they plan to broaden the focus in the near future to include such targets as medical device companies and non-profits.

The company's business model was inspired by Martin's own experience as a senior executive "in transition" -- except that his situation was far from voluntary.

After some 20 years in operations and manageent at several local banks, as a sales and marketing vice president for a manufacturing company and as a marketing consultant, he was laid off when an employer was acquired and relocated.

In his search for short-term employment to keep him going as he searched for a permanent job, he found few resources to help him find a match for his MBA and his job experience.

"That's when it became clear," he said. "There's a lot of experienced executive talent out there that's going to waste" for want of such assistance.

So far, the number of placements has been limited -- an average of 10 at any point last year. But negotiations are underway with a large health care system interested in using Experienced Resources both to handle interim projects and as a resource for its own employees who are in transition from full-time employment.

That could boost the placement rate significantly, Martin said, and is the basis for his projection that the company's gross could triple this year.

But continued growth is a challenge. "Most companies are unaware of this resource," he said. "It's a matter of educating employers about it." The trouble is, "Our own resources for marketing the business are limited."

But the demographics are in their favor. By the end of 2011, there'll be 60,000 Minnesota workers turning 62 and the first wave of baby boomers will be turning 65, according to the Minnesota State Demographic Center.

And the impact: By 2012, the number of people in the workforce will fall about 158,000, or 4.8 percent, short of the projected number of jobs, according to an estimate from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

Christensen and Martin are counting on one more statistic to solve that problem -- and expand their business: A recent survey by the AARP found that 80 percent of baby boomers expect to work at least part time in retirement.