(Originally published in Colorado Biz Magazine.)

Your idea: Great project, great budget, great resources, great potential.

No people.

You need specific skills from one or more people who will click with your company, be enthusiastic, and then go away at project’s end.

From its renovated Victorian in Littleton, CONNECT:The Knowledge Network searches out and supplies temp workers ­ the Knowledge Network ­ with expertise in any of seven areas: management, project management, data management and warehousing, system development and support, system and network administration, and human systems.

CONNECT was founded in 1992 by Maureen Clarry and Kelly Gilmore, both IT pros who’s seen the worst of IT temps while working at General Electric. They drew up their own business model: to bring teams together and then disband them when the project was done, Clarry said. The two strive for a human touch, trying to keep their 3,500 consultants’ career goals in mind and maybe doing some career coaching after the stringent testing phase, while coming through on clients’; projects.

CONNECT consults with a company, determining corporate culture, budget and other points, then gives objective recommendations for a project.

Biggest demand is for database specialists (programmers, administrators) and e-biz pros (strategy, Java programmers, and content developers), Clarry said. Costs for those have run between $60 an hour to $8,500 a day to $135,000 a year.

Back at the 1890 Victorian (which the two purchased for $100,000 five years ago and is now valued at $500,000), CONNECT’s 17 full-time staffers have flexible hours and an onsite daycare in a separate facility in the backyard.

By Mary Ann Lemon, Citrus Communications

If you’re interested in workforce trends, to follow you’ll find a few major ones from Ira Matathia and Marian Salzman’s recent book, Next: Trends for the Near Future, as summarized in an April article in Workforce Magazine. In short, the number of full time employees is dropping drastically, while contract workers and SoHos ­ “Small Office, Home Office” workers are on the rise. Many estimates indicate up to 35% of office work is being handled by contingency workers or contractors. These “free workers” will need a host of new services, from skill training to management coaching. “In the information technology industry, the percentage of contract workers versus permanent hires tends to fluctuate dramatically based on the availability of people, business urgency of the project, and internal budgets and processes for hiring” commented Kelly Gilmore, partner in CONNECT.

How do these trends apply in Colorado?

Jeanne Lomba, customer service manager at high tech placement firm CONNECT: The Knowledge Network comments that these trends are behind the fast growth of her firm, which works with a database of some 3,000 consultants in the IT industry. Lomba fields comments all day from high tech consultants in the IT trenches. What she sees is that with the corporate world’s rising dependence on consultants is rising frustration over poor personality matches. Employers are realizing that consultant hired strictly on skills may not fit into the team or the corporate culture, which wastes everyone’s time.

“Clients are telling us they don’t want just a set of skills, they want to make a good match in every way. If a consultant is someone who likes to make decisions, who likes to be creative, who likes to move at a steady pace, and the company’s culture does not support that, everyone will butt heads and the consultant will fail. We have to consider the company’s hours, flexibility, how the teams work, the hierarchical structure, the organizational structure ­ in short, what it is like to live there — before we place a consultant.”

On the flip side, Lomba said “die-hard” consultants have been lured to full-time jobs based on a great match their new-found employers corporate culture. “I know of three bona fide, diehard contractors, who within a month of telling me how much they enjoyed the flexibility and freedom of contracting, took perm positions with the clients we had matched them up with. In addition to a good benefit and compensation plan, they cited easy integration with company culture, pleasant working environment, capability

to maintain some of their ‘consultative’ demeanor and talented professionals on their projects as reasons they decided to make the switch.”

In more detail, here are some of the trends discussed by Matathia and Salzman:

Full-Time Employees decrease in Number

Rather than shoulder the financial burden of permanent, full-time employees, many companies are turning to part-time and temporary workers. In North America, temporary services firm Olsten Corp. found that more than a third of companies employ temporary workers in managerial or professional positions. Among companies using temporary workers, 53 percent utilize accountants, 32 percent retain information systems specialists, 28 percent utilize human resource professionals, and 27 percent use administrative professionals. Ninety-six percent of companies surveyed by Olsten plan to increase or maintain current levels of temporary workers. Recently the Human Resources Institute conducted a study called “The Changing Nature of Work.” In the 90 companies participating, 25 percent to 35 percent of their work was being done by contingency workers or outside contractors.

Hot Jobs for the Millennium

Which occupations will thrive in the next millennium? The following are likely to be on the upswing thanks to the rise in contract workers, SOHOs and temporary workers.

An increasing need for skills trainers. Rapid technological change, combined with the growth of contract workers, demands people who can train employees and freelance workers.

Onsite repair services for home office equipment.

Equipment lessors and business sites. Savvy entrepreneurs will lease equipment or rent a cubicle (or meeting space, as needed) from a business supersite.

Executive coaches: Isolated, home-based workers need help. Coaches will help clients prioritize their goals and better manage their businesses and their lives.

Small Offices and Home Offices Grow

As workers begin to rely less on corporate loyalty and more on their own skills, while also taking advantage of the opportunities new technologies afford, more and more of them are setting up shop on their own. “SOHO” which stands for Small Office, Home Office, is a chic code word for “free worker” and entrepreneur. Small offices and home offices are expected to increase from 34.7 million in 1997 to 40.2 million this year. Men and women work from home in approximately equal numbers, according to the Department of Labor, but women are more likely to work exclusively from the home.

By Quentin Young, The Villager

The winner of the 2000 Small business of the Year Award is a company that attributes much of its success to keeping the “business” side of its business in check.

Maureen Clarry and Kelly Gilmore, principals of CONNECT:The Knowledge Network Inc., accepted their award at a luncheon Feb. 25. The event was sponsored by the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce and the Business Growth Center. CONNECT was chosen from among four finalists, who were in turn chosen from a field of 20 nominations.

Only 8 years old, CONNECT provides information technology staffing services to such powerhouses as Hewlett Packard, Polaroid, TCI, Exxon and RJ Reynolds. The company handles over 2,000 information technology professionals who are available for consulting, contract-to-hire and direct hire.

Clarry and Gilmore pointed out the major strength of their company, saying family and life apart from work should never be neglected for the sake of business. “We set out to do something important without forgetting what’s really important,” said Gilmore. She said as a businessperson, you should “integrate your work self and your home self and make them one self.”

In its early days, CONNECT was run from Gilmore’s bedroom. Then the company moved to Clarry’s basement. When it outgrew the basement, it moved to its present location in Littleton, a building that was once a convent.

In her acceptance speech, Gilmore said, “We did set out to create an award-winning company, but we didn’t expect to win an award.” Said Clarry, “we believe our success has been a result of God’s grace.”

The other three finalists were Sandhill Scientific Inc., CoCal Landscape and Microtech-Tel Inc.

With only 25 employees, Sandhill Scientific has gone from floundering to being a leader in its field. The company makes hospital diagnostic equipment used by gastroenterologists and endoscopic surgeons.

Founded in 1992, CoCal is a full-service landscape construction, maintenance and renovations contractor. The company is dedicated to providing opportunities, such as English classes and year-round employment, to its largely Hispanic employees.

Microtech-Tel Inc., founded in 1988, is a “one-stop shop” for voice, data and video solutions. Founder Sam Koumar, an immigrant from India, told the luncheon audience, “This is a fabulous country … I want to thank the American people for giving us this great opportunity.”

Chamber Honors Small Business

By Robert Schwab, Denver Post Business Writer

About a year after Maureen Clarry and Kelly Gilmore started their information technology staffing company in 1992, both were very pregnant. When they made sales calls together, clients would look at them and say, “Oh, bookends!”

With clients didn’t know then was how important those sales calls were to each of the two women’s families.

Each made the primary income in their families at the time they quit their jobs to start CONNECT:The Knowledge Network Inc., their Littleton firm.

It was eight moths later when, within two weeks of each other, each learned she was pregnant.

On Friday, Clarry and Gilmore stood together again to accept their designation by the South Metro Denver chamber of Commerce as small business of the year.

Their company, which now generates $7 million in annual revenues, was one of 20 firms nominated for the award.

“We did set out to make an award-winning company,” Gilmore told chamber members at a lunch at the Hilton Denver Tech South. “But we never thought we’d win an award.”

CONNECT took its cue from those early days when both women were pregnant and yet persisted in their dream to create a business that supplemented rather than destroyed their family lives, both said in an interview.

As space for their company of now 17 employees diminished, first in the Gilmores’ bedroom where CONNECT started, then in the Clarrys’ basement where it moved, the pair kept in mind that they quit jobs as IT professionals with GE because they wanted to create a company where they controlled the time they could spend with their children.

So when they bought and restored the old St. Mary’s convent at 5602 S. Nevada St., Littleton, they converted a stand-alone b building on the lot into an on-site day-care center for their own and their employees’ children.

That “family-friendly” management helped win the award for the pair.

The South Metro chamber, which has made a tradition of serenading their business-of-the-year winners, sang this lyric to the women, to the tune of Ricky Martin’s “livin la Vida Loca”:

“They had a complication right from the start, babies in quick succession, but clients had a heart.”

But both Gilmore and Clarry made it clear in their interview that the “soft” parts of their story ­ the convent renovation, the day care, their pregnancies &­ were not the elements that made a success of their firm, which has many competitors in Denver’s high-tech-crazed market.

Gilmore said the pair have crafted teams of high-tech programmers, database administrators and others to the specific needs of their customers.

Lately, they have also acted as headhunters for large-company executive searches, placing people with Rhythms NetConnections and with Level 3 Communications Inc.

Three other finalists were named in the South Metro Chamber competition: CoCal Landscape, a minority-owned firm; Microtech-Tel Inc., founded by Sam V. Koumar, an immigrant from India; and Sandhill Scientific Inc., a booming medical technology manufacturer.