By: Rex Crum

One of the nation's largest temporary staffing agencies has spun off a new division aimed at filling companies growing demand for qualified World Wide Web site specialists.

Launched New Year's Day in Boston, Web-Staff is a division of the privately owned MacTemps Inc. of Boston.

Web-Staff, which already has offices in 15 other markets, will provide companies with web experts on a temporary basis. Specialists will be available to handle all aspects of web site development, including graphics production, programming, site management and system administration.

Figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show nearly 760,000 Internet-related jobs were created in the United States in 1996. This growth trickled down into new business for MacTemps. Company officials said its web-connected work in 1997 in the Boston area alone grew by 550 percent to $8 million.

This surge in web-industry employment led to the decision to create a separate business focusing on staffing for corporate web services. John Chuang, MacTemps president and founder, said throughout the year his company noticed the increase in web work and felt it reached a point where the firm could focus on building a separate web training business.

"More of our business became web-related without us doing anything about it. It really became a no-brainer for us to create a separate unit," Chuang said.

Nikki Granner, general manager of Web-Staff in Boston, said the local office employs four people who deal with administrative and staffing work. Granner said that as in Boston, there has been a growing need for more specialized web professionals in the company's other markets.

"In most places where we are, we knew web applications people were becoming standard for staffing needs. We were doing some of this with MacTemps. We felt that we weren't strong enough, and that we could help more," Granner said.

Unlike other companies just starting out on their own, Web-Staff has the convenience of having the MacTemps reputation and resources behind it.

"To an extent, it was very easy to launch quickly. We already had a presence in several cities that gave us a lot of time to get our staffs ready," Granner said.

Granner said Web-Staff will use its MacTemps connections to build business contacts, but will not attempt to "coerce" its parent company's clients to work with Web-Staff.

While much of 11-year-old MacTemps' business has dealt with providing companies with professional Macintosh-trained staff, Web-Staff personnel will have to be qualified in Windows-based information technology programming. Chuang said that is just the nature of the web, but the company, which did 4$00 million in revenue in 1997, will not cut back on its Macintosh training and staffing efforts.

"Our Mac business is doing well, and grew about 20 percent last year. Much creative content work is Mac-based and we are the largest creative content provider in the U.S.," Chuang said.

Web-Staff now employs about 20 international placement people in its 16 markets in Canada, Great Britain and the United States. Chuang said he expects the company to expand into all of MacTemps 30 national and international markets by the end of the year.