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Temporary work simply isn't what it used to be.
Imagine this scenario: A large corporation is undergoing a merger. It needs seasoned finance and accounting staff who have hands-on experience coping with all the quirks of acquisitions. However, the expanded company isn't in a position to hire new staff and, even if it could, the need for these people would basically evaporate once the merger is accomplished.
Because of changes in corporate attitudes and in the nature of employment itself, more and more companies find themselves seeking high-level employees for short-term projects. In 1990, four CPAs with backgrounds in Big 6 firms and in industry decided this development had created aa marketplace niche they could fill. They created Accountants 4 Contract, a company that provides businesses with high-end accounting, finance, tax and business management talent for assignments that might last from a few weeks to a couple of years.
AN EXCITING TIME
Dan Maisler and two of his cofounders met while working together in the 1980s at Wells Fargo, which was in the midst of acquiring Crocker National Bank. "We were all very much involved in the Crocker acquisition," he recalls. "It was an exciting time because there were a lot of new challenges. We were breaking new ground. But although the company was pulling out all the stops to get the job done, we found there wasn't a lot of help available." The company didn't want to do any permanent hiring despite the big budget for the project. "We had to scramble to find highly qualified people to work on the merger who wouldn't be permanent hires."
Maisler was later recruited to work at Pacific Telesis, which was continuing to build an infrastructure after the AT&T spinoff, another situation in which the company needed high-level experience for a finite period. He later worked as a consultant, finally meeting up in 1990 with two of his CPA colleagues from Wells Fargo, who were also consulting. All three had worked independently or through short-term placement agencies, and found that many of the people sent by temporary agencies were not of the same caliber as a CPA with high-level industry experience. Having stumbled onto this gap in the marketplace, "we decided to do something about it,"...