The Talent Market

V. What's Yiddish for "Talent"?

M2 is giving new meaning to old terms by playing the talent game by new rules. Like MacTemps, it connects buyers of free-agent talent with sellers of free-agent talent. But unlike MacTemps, M2 works both sides of the street. It's not a talent agent. It wants the best deal for both sides - not just the best part for one particular actor. Its goal is to achieve a perfect match.

But what do you call such an outfit? In the new dictionary of work, what's the term for this new institution?

Don't call it a "middleman." It's more than that. Besides, there aren't many men in the M2 operation. The company's three principals are women, and so is 75% of its staff. Don't call this new kind of organization a temp agency either. Temp agencies deal in commodities - fungible items whose sellers compete primarily by offering a lower price. Talent is a stock, not a commodity.

The company bills itself as "the premier broker of independent consultants to companies in need of 'spot-market' expertise and just-in-time management staffing." Some people at M2 liken the company to Charles Schwab, the megabrokerage whose headquarters is nearby. Others compare it to NASDAQ. Cofounder and President Marion McGovern, 40, calls the company "an arbitrageur of talent." In other words, it profits from price discrepancies between different markets: It "purchases" talent at a price that sellers are willing to accept - and then "sells" the talent to buyers willing to pay a higher price. In M2's case, a 30% to 35% markup on its talent yielded revenues in 1997 of more than $8.2 million.

Claire McAuliffe, 40, one of M2's three principals, tries to cut through the naming confusion. "We are a hybrid," she says in her corner office at the company's no-nonsense headquarters. "We're not a search firm. We're not a consulting firm. We're not a temp agency. We're not a dating service. We're sort of a corporate yenta." Think of the new economy as a village - a shtetl - and M2 as a talent matchmaker: an honest broker who works to make the matches that make the talent market work.

"What we're seeing in the primordial soup of California is that there are willing workers and willing buyers," says McAuliffe. "We get the best person we can, for the best price, for the right amount of time. At the end of the day, the transaction is quite simple."

Still, not everybody gets it. In 1988, when McGovern launched the company with Reynolds, the terms "talent market" and "human capital" were not found in the conventional business vocabulary. But McGovern knew how to speak the language of the future - even if others didn't. "Early on, we were doing mostly evangelism," she says. The most common response to her early efforts: "You do what?"

Yet McGovern kept at it, slowly building a portfolio of talent stocks - and a roster of clients to buy them. Today she says that she's still evangelizing but that more people get it. Witness the company's growth: Last year, M2 opened a Los Angeles branch. More than 5,000 free-agent managers, marketers, and other business mavens have passed muster and are listed on the M2 exchange. The minimum requirements: You need at least 10 years of work experience; you must be committed to free agency and not on the lookout for a regular job; your experience must extend beyond the purely technical; and you must have demonstrated success in previous jobs and assignments. Even though M2 does very little advertising, about 50 new applicants approach the company each week. Most - like Norma Castrillo - discover the firm through word of mouth.

Ultimately, the goal of M2 is to redefine the meaning of "career." "We are trying to create a profession of consultants," says Reynolds, "a profession based on moving around and building your expertise." Toward that end, the company is focusing relentlessly on making the right match, one match at a time. Says McAuliffe: "Every single day, we remember that we can't be successful if we're not helping both sides of the match to be successful."

VI. Things Get Rocky for Bullwinkle

Garland, Texas is a long way from the leveraged deals and decaf lattes of San Francisco's financial hub. It's a brawny place - long on muscle, short on shimmer. And it's where Dick Bullwinkle, 60, runs a company called DAC Vision out of a one-story building in an industrial section of town. DAC Vision manufactures the machines used to make contact lenses, as well as supplies used in the manufacture of eyeglass lenses. And the company has done very well by that business: It has 180 employees and brings in $50 million in revenues. But the advent of computer-driven machines threatens to put a dent in the company's supply business. So Bullwinkle went looking for ways to compensate for that potential loss.