Pens, hats and key chains are the usual stuff of corporate mementos.

But Wellspring Group's first client received a batch of homemade cookies, made by co-founder Melissa Peirce.

"Big (staffing) companies give you hats and shirts with their logo on it, and this personal touch stood out," said Noemi Guadalupe, who four years ago was Oracle development manager at Monster.com. She turned to Wellspring to locate contract help.

When the technology staffing company was founded four years ago in Shelton, the timing could hardly have been worse. "We placed our first two consultants on Sept. 11 (2001)," Peirce said.

The recession, however, did not put a brake on Wellspring's growth.

"We have doubled our revenues every year," said Amy Dain-Vincelette, Wellspring's co-founder. The firm's revenues went from $1.7 million in 2002 to $2.5 million in 2003 and $3.8 million in 2004. The company expects to close out the year with $7 million in revenue.

"The fact that they were able to grow in an economic downturn speaks volumes about them," Guadalupe said. "I would call on a Friday with a specific need, and they would have between three to five candidates with Oracle expertise by Monday."

Technology staffing firms connect employers with candidates who have technological expertise in a specific area, like "software or mainframe development, quality assurance and JAVA developers," Peirce said. "We go all the way to senior-level people, vice president, senior vice president, all the way to the chief information officer level," Dain-Vincelette said.

Wellspring's first client was Monster.com and today its clients typically are midsize to Fortune 100 companies.

Following the 9/11 attacks, the job market ground to a halt and "there were a lot of candidates for a few jobs," said Dain-Vincelette. "Cross-functionality" was the buzzword, as recruiters were looking for candidates with expertise in a variety of functions to fill the few available jobs.

As the economy rebounded over the next four years, they say it brought new opportunity.

The company's growth seems to counter recent trends of flat technology hiring.

According to a survey conducted by Skillproof, a company that tracks job listings on corporate career Web sites, the IT job market remained unchanged since January and is down 0.2 percent from August.

Tryg R. Angell, principal of the Trumbull-based staffing firm Tryg R Angell Ltd., said in general, companies employing technological staff are not growing, adding "there's not much opportunity around."

Leaving the corporate scene

Prior to 9/11, Dain-Vincelette and Melissa Peirce were both working in the technology staffing industry. A few years back, they both worked at Command Systems, Dain-Vincelette on the sales and marketing side of staffing and Peirce as a recruiter.

They liked the industry but felt increasingly constrained by corporate culture.

"There was a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of layers and approvals. There are so many things in between getting a job requirement and placing a person that it was becoming daunting. We said, 'we can do this better, keep things simple, keep rates and overhead down, because we function lean and mean,'" said Dain-Vincelette.

There was also the issue of quality of life.

The future business partners were commuting to New York City, Dain-Vincelette from Fairfield and Peirce from New Haven.

Peirce was working flex hours at Command Systems to offset the tough commute, but "when the company got bought out in 2001, I saw the writing on the wall," Peirce said. She considered changing to another company, but "I didn't think that a company would give me the flexibility I was accustomed to. I called Amy and said, 'what am I going to do?' And she said, 'why don't we start our own company?'" Peirce recalls.

Virtual recruiting

Along with not being tied to corporate traditions, Wellspring also does not believe in being tied to a physical location. The company is headquartered in Shelton, but it is set up to operate in a virtual environment. Wellspring has a recruiter in northern New Jersey and a salesperson who lives in Pennsylvania. Their 50 consultants reside in a geographic area that stretches from Texas in the west, to Georgia in the south, to Connecticut in the north. Wellspring started with two employees and added two more in 2002, and five in 2003. The company now consists of a core group of 15 people. Although she declined to give exact profit margin figures, Peirce said that because Wellspring operates with a low overhead, it remains competitive in a "very tight market."

Guadalupe said past experiences with larger staffing firms involved a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy, so she valued the direct contact with Wellspring. "No matter how much they grew, I always felt like I was their only client."

The three job position types Wellspring fills are permanent, consultant and consultant-to-hire. A consultant works for a specified period of time and under a consultant-to-hire scenario, the client has the option to hire the candidate full time should the need arise. Roughly two-thirds of job placements fall under the consultant category, the remaining third are full-time positions.

Controlled growth

Shortly after striking out on its own, Wellspring met its first challenge. A client needed them to find seven Oracle financial developers in two weeks. The partners worked around the clock reading resumes to get the job done on time. They added additional staff after that.

That has been the strategy, expanding only when more resources are needed. "We expand when we no longer have the staff or resources to handle the business," Dain-Vincelette said. The partners are planning to add two staff members in January to serve the region from Maryland to Florida.

Most of the company's growth is attributable to referrals from existing clients.

In 2003, Peirce's husband, Jay, and Dain-Vincelette's husband, Brian, joined Wellspring. Jay has a financial background and helps determine how creative strategies affect the bottom line and Brian handles information technology operations and quality assurance.

The staffing industry has gone through fundamental changes as a result of technological innovation. "Ten years ago, this was primarily a phone-based business," said Dain-Vincelette. She remembers getting the appropriate resumes together and taking them physically to the client site.

Now, resumes are just a keyboard away, however, this also means that "we all fish in the same pond," according to Dain-Vincelette.

The founders say they compete by hiring experienced staffers who have built relationships over the years to find a deeper pool of candidates.

Tag team

Although they come from the same industry, Dain-Vincelette and Peirce bring different personalities to their jobs. "We are the yin and yang of staffing," Dain-Vincelette said.

While Dain-Vincelette is instinctual, Peirce is more analytical. It is usually Dain-Vincelette who comes up with a creative idea and looks to Peirce to see if it's realistic to implement it.

Like when the company began to take off, Dain-Vincelette wanted to bring in new talent, but wasn't sure if it was the right move.

"Melissa thought it was worth the risk to take on new employees and figured out the logistics in order to bring them on board as quickly as possible," Dain-Vincelette said.

"We do a great thing for a living," Dain-Vincelette added. "We help people find jobs and we help our clients find people."