Hire expectations

A little-noticed measure of the job market's health is taking off: hiring of human resources professionals.

Employers optimistic about 2004 are snapping up recruiters, hiring managers, and other staffing specialists. Two Boston-area networking groups for unemployed HR executives report dwindling ranks as their members land jobs.

"If you're going to hire, you need hirers," said Nicholas Perna, a Connecticut economic consultant. "We don't have to sit around and wait for the government's next payroll survey to come out for me to add up the pieces that hiring is rising."

The rebound in human resources, a tiny but telling segment of the economy, provides a glimmer of hope to counter official reports on the condition of the US labor market. In December, the US job market generated a paltry 1,000 jobs, and Massachusetts' unemployment rate rose to 5.7 percent, from 5.5 percent in November.

Other indications of hiring activity have surfaced: A survey released this week by New York human resources consultant DBM found 50 percent of HR professionals plan to "moderately to greatly boost hiring activity in 2004," a sharp rise over plans a year ago. The Institute of Supply Management's hiring indexes for manufacturing and nonmanufacturing companies are rising. And classified advertising sales on major Internet job boards also rose steadily last year and in the first weeks of January, according to Corzen Inc., which tracks online market share.

The pickup in HR employment ends one of the worst periods in the profession's recent history. "Thankfully, this appears to be over," said Brendan King, president of HR consultants King & Bishop.

Employers staffing their human resources departments are often filling long-vacant positions. But even when these jobs are filled, new hiring doesn't happen at once. There is typically a delay before these executives can, in turn, gear up to increase payrolls, which helps to explain why activity is slow to appear in federal employment data.

Hiring of HR staff is most prevalent among smaller employers, the engines of any economic turnaround. They run the gamut from Taunton food distributor Agar Supply Inc. to the Waltham securities firm Commonwealth Financial Network. Even high-tech manufacturing shows signs of life.

Recruiters are being brought in by Fortune 500 corporations, such as Raytheon Corp. The first thing the defense contractor's new director of talent recruiting, Michael Quinn, did after starting in August was to more than double his own staff. They then hired hundreds of engineers for the Tewksbury plant and plans have been made to employ hundreds more, many assigned to design integrated systems for the US Navy's next-generation destroyers.

In June, California-based Symmetricom hired Michele Shindelman to head human resources at its Beverly operation, filling a position empty for a year. She hired 75 people -- engineers, scientists, support, and financial staff. The hiring burst partly resulted from a decision to close a California facility and transfer jobs to Beverly. But Shindelman estimates rising demand for the company's products was responsible for one in five new jobs at Symmetricom. Another 15 positions are open.

"In the past couple of months, we've seen an uptick in business," she said.

Inside Symmetricom's plant, just off Route 128, technicians in royal-blue smocks lean over workbenches assembling the internal workings of precision timing devices used, for example, in telecommunications. One new hire, Randy Bird, 43, oversees quality control for parts purchased for use in manufacturing. Laid off last April after 24 years at his former employer, Ametek Aerospace, he was looking for a new job by mid-summer. In September, he had two offers and chose Symmetricom.

When Shindelman began searching for talent, candidates were plentiful. As 2003 progressed, she said, Symmetricom competed for candidates, like Bird, with multiple offers. There are fewer people to pick from, and they are hired quickly. "As we moved into the fall and winter, we've seen a change," she said.

Shindelman and other unemployed HR professionals flocked to industry networking groups during the recession to prospect for job leads. Membership in one network, the King & Bishop HR Roundtable, ballooned to 150 members last summer. Only 50 members are now left -- the rest found work. Another Boston-area group, the Senior Human Resources Network Group, is seeing unusually rapid turnover among its membership, which is limited to 25. They, too, are finding jobs.

"It was a fairly abrupt turnaround," said Gary MacDonald, director of human resources for the trade group Associated Industries of Massachusetts. An improving market for HR professionals mirrors rising business confidence among the state's employers, he said.

Last spring, Edward Boylan joined Agar Supply as director of human resources, after a temporary consulting stint. He recruited more than 50 drivers, night-shift merchandise selectors, and others for its new food-distribution warehouse. Although restaurant customers tell her business is "picking up," chief executive Karen Bressler is "very conservative" about hiring.

"I want to take care of the employees I have," she said. "For me to take on a bunch of people because I'm optimistic, only to find we're running into cost overruns, wouldn't be responsible on my part."

Indeed, the job market is a long way from full recovery. After nine months of unemployment, Dan Guliano's recent employment as the HR manager at Vibro-Meter Inc. marked a welcome return to stability. There is moderate hiring at the Manchester, N.H.-based aerospace equipment company after years of layoffs that slashed employment by half.

For 2004, Guliano predicted "not rapid growth but continuous growth," he said. "What's most important is we've stabilized."

Kimberly Blanton can be reached at blanton@globe.com.