Anecdotal evidence suggests hiring by Orange County’s small-business community is resuming in earnest, as companies’ customer and client bases return to predownturn levels.
ViArch Integrated Solutions Inc. in Orange is set to double its current work force.
“We need to take on at least five more people,” said Angela Jones, chief financial officer of the company, which develops automated test systems. “We’ve got projects across the board. We’re talking to a company now that’s making chargers for electric vehicles.”
A 50% staff expansion is under way at Irvine-based Control Corrective Skin Care Systems in Irvine.
“We’re currently close to hiring two new people, and we have hired three people in the past year,”
Control Corrective Chief Executive Ellen Clark said.
That’s got its headquarters staff at 10 employees and counting.
OC added 3,100 nonfarm jobs in March, according to the California Employment Development Department. The county’s monthly unemployment rate rose to 8.1% from 8%, as growth in the county’s labor outpaced job creation.
The state Employment Development Department says business services and tourism have been the most active hiring sectors in the recent past, while local business officials cite even broader areas of job creation locally.
“The Orange County economy, once again, is outperforming the state and the nation,” said Wallace Walrod, chief economic officer for the Orange County Business Council. “Even manufacturing has gained.”
Gaining Strength
“The economy is starting to gain strength,” Walrod said. “Businesses are feeling more confident that the overall economy is going to continue with recovery.
I don’t think there’s any real risk of a double-dip recession.”
That’s allowed companies to take on new business initiatives, which often generate new hires.
“They’re willing now to spend more on marketing and hiring to increase sales than they were, let’s say, two years ago,” said Dennis Wright, chairman of the county chapter of SCORE, which advises smallbusiness owners.
“Social media is a buzz that seems to be gaining momentum. A lot of folks want to know, ‘What would it do for me?’ ”
One of Clark’s hires last year was a fulltime marketing specialist in social media.
“That’s been a real plus,” she said.
“We’ve really built our Facebook and Twitter engagement. All those things are really important to the growth of our business.”
Rebranding
Clark hopes capitalizing on social media will reinforce the successful rebranding of her firm’s line of clinical skin-care products.
That effort began during the recession of 2009.
“We said, ‘What could we do to be more market-ready when things turn around?’ instead of saying, ‘What’s the competition doing?’ ” Clark said. “We knew we had to do it. It was very expensive. Now, we’ve had the best quarter that we’ve ever had.
The difference is huge.”
Hiring more people would enable Jones’ company to increase its versatility.
“The companies that hire us like the fact that we can solve problems on a wide variety of levels,” she said.
ViArch clients include Boeing Co. in Chicago and Cleveland-based Parker Hannifin Corp.
“I think everybody felt the pinch when things were really bad a couple of years ago,” Jones said. “Larger companies that we dealt with cut back on these larger projects.”
“Now there’s a backlog of work, and that’s really driving our need to find added people,” she said. “We have a certain expertise that even these large companies don’t specifically have in house.”
For Clark, the secret of small-business success has little to do with economic recovery or the greater availability of capital.
“It really was about doing things the right way,” she said. “If you deliver high quality in a lot of levels in your business— provide good value, good price, good service one customer at a time—and you listen to your audience, as a small company you can survive anything.”
