Temporarily Filling the Bill

NEWPORT BEACH —  Last winter was the most public of times and the most private of moments for Mary Ellen Weaver.

The founder and chief executive of Data Processing Resources Corp., Weaver was preparing to embark on a road trip with her management team.

Their well-mapped plan, which included 56 presentations across the country over a two-week period, was to sell investors on a temporary staffing agency in Newport Beach that places computer programmers, designers and technicians into corporations that no longer want to hire their own workers to do these constantly changing jobs.

Nothing too unusual except Weaver, then 44, was in her seventh month of pregnancy. “I know every bathroom between here and New York,” she joked. “Fortunately, I felt great.”

The frenetic trip went off without a hitch.

The company launched its initial public offering March 5, raising $33.5 million to finance ambitious expansion plans and to pay off debt.

The stock sale capped an 11-year venture that began when Weaver took over an inactive company and built it into one of the area’s most successful temporary staffing companies.

Two months later, a healthy boy named Ryan was born.

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It has been an unlikely journey for a woman born to blue-collar parents in a Michigan town so small the elementary school lacked indoor plumbing. And it’s been one made through an industry best known for sending female receptionists and typists to help executives out in a pinch.

But success was possible for Weaver, and her company, because of changes in both social mores and corporate America.

Weaver got her start in Southern California’s temporary business--after leaving behind a marriage and teaching career in Michigan--by accident.

“I just kind of fell into it,” she said. “I was a crummy typist.”

So, she started learning the management side of the business, sending temporary engineers to jobs from XXCAL Inc. in Los Angeles and then landing a position at Thomas Temporaries in Torrance. She found she was well suited for the task of keeping both consultant and client happy.

“I think it’s a personality thing,” Weaver said. “I don’t have a technical background. But this is a people business. It’s all about relationship-building.”

By the time she became a 50% partner of the inactive DPRC in 1985, it was also destined to be a hot business--the answer to corporations under fire to keep work forces slim but still keep up with the increasing complexities of computer technology.

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DPRC, which employs 39 people in seven offices and sends 800 consultants into the field on any given day, is working to respond to an industry trend that promises to keeping churning into the next century--if some formidable challenges can be overcome.

Computer experts on staff at large corporations cannot keep up with the various specialties as hardware and software programs diversify and intensify, said Michael A. Piraino, DPRC’s senior vice president and chief financial officer.

And corporations have been loathe to take on new employees to handle each new hiccup in hardware and software programs.

“It’s a megatrend,” Piraino said. “With changing technology, corporations can’t afford to have all that expertise on staff. It’s just not possible.”

One answer was temporary computer experts.

The trend toward contracting in place of hiring has boosted revenues from technical temporary staffing companies nationwide from $5.7 billion in 1993 to $8.9 billion in 1995, an increase of about 25%, according to Staffing Industry Report.

The consultants that DPRC sends into the field bear little resemblance to the Kelly Girl of old. But the DPRC team found the image to be a persistent one.

“We had to educate the investors about the sector we’re in,” Piraino said of the road trip. “This is not a clerical person making $8 an hour for an assignment that lasts a couple days.”

Instead, they are highly educated experts, with at least five years in the field. Once assigned to a company, they might stay for one to three years, pulling down $60 to $80 per hour.

Finding enough of them can be one of the company’s biggest challenges.

“They’re picky, they know they’re in demand,” Piraino said of the contractors, who go through several interviews and tests before they are entered in the data base. “For every 10 orders we receive, we only fill two to three because there aren’t enough people.”

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And the company to date has been dependent on relatively few blue-chip clients.

While 800 consultants were sent to 150 clients last year, 10 large clients accounted for 60% of the company’s revenues, with Nissan Motor Corp. USA and Mitsubishi Motor Sales of America accounting for the lion’s share.

But both existing clients and contractors appear to have strong loyalty to the agency, a feat that colleagues and associates attribute to Weaver’s ability to finesse and nurture both.

She stays in close personal contact with the company’s clients and has been known to drive wayward paychecks to contractors’ homes on Friday evenings.

“That’s one of the things that attracted us to this company--their long-term relationships with customers and consultants,” said Judith Scott, a managing director and securities analyst with Milwaukee’s Robert W. Baird & Co., one of the underwriters for the public offering. Weaver “is very tuned in to her clients and to the consultants and very much of a people person, problem solver, a good listener.”

When times were harsh during the recession, Weaver worked with clients to ensure their continued business and that credit payed off, Scott said.

Times started getting better in 1994, when Weaver hired a management team. The next year, the Los Angeles investment firm of Riordan, Lewis & Haden came into the company, owning 23.7% of the company’s shares after the public offering.

DPRC increased its total revenues from $23.2 million in 1993 to $49.6 million in 1995, ending the first half of 1996 with total revenues of $27.1 million.

New hub offices have opened in Denver and Seattle along with the Newport Beach office, with branch offices in San Francisco, Woodland Hills and Kansas City. In July, DPRC acquired Omaha-based ADD Consulting, Inc. for $8.7 million in cash and stock valued at $3.7 million. More acquisitions and openings are planned very soon, Piraino said.

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Weaver said she has loved every phase of the business.

Along the way, she and her husband decided that her career was on the more profitable path and that, if they wanted a family, something would have to give.

So Weaver barely signed off her e-mail long enough to bear son Patrick 2 1/2 years ago, and bore a full workload from her home office for the six weeks of maternity leave she took after Ryan’s birth.

Her husband, Matthew Moschetti, continues to work as a baseball coach at St. John Bosco High School in Bellflower, but pulled out of his family’s sporting goods business to be the home parent. They employ a nanny 40 hours a week, and Weaver is the first to admit that other working moms have it a lot harder.

Nor does she claim to be Supermom. Giving most of her time to the company was not an easy decision to make, but a conscious one.

But she has no plans to pull back on her workaholic schedule, even as the public offering reduced her control of the company to 38.5% of the common stock.

“You have to give up something to do what I do,” Weaver said. “You’ve made a commitment to many other people and the family ends up getting short shrift. I worried about it all the time and I still do.”

But the balance seems to have paid off, both personally and professionally.

“I really wanted to do things my way,” she said.

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A Temporary Solution

Mary Ellen Weaver took over an inactive company and has turned it into a successful temporary staffing concern. A look at the woman and her company, Data Processing Resources:

Mary Ellen Weaver

Position: Chairman of the board and chief executive officer

Age: 45

Residence: Huntington Beach

Family: Husband Matthew and two children

Education: Bachelor’s degree in speech and language pathology, Central Michigan University

On women’s work: “I truly believe that women have to work harder. I don’t think it’s right, but it’s probably a fact.... I think it will be many years before that changes, but it is getting better. The good news is that women coming up don’t know any better.”

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Data Processing Resources

Headquarters: Newport Beach

Business: Supplies high-tech temporary employees to large companies

Founded: 1985

Status: Went public last March

Exchange: Nasdaq

Chairman/CEO: Mary Ellen Weaver

Employees: 39, and about 800 working temps

1995 sales: $49.6 million

Net income: $1.7 million

Sources: Data Processing Resources, Bloomberg News Service