Some Firms Have Shaken Off Slump And They’re Hiring : Employment: Companies adding workers offer a wide range of reasons, but rarely cite those commonly given for region’s recovery--such as earthquake repairs.

For all the talk of economic rebound in Southern California, actually finding companies that are hiring is not easy. But a few pockets of recovery are emerging.

At Leadership Management Associates of California, an Agoura Hills consulting company, the staff has grown to 31 from nine since the summer. Chief Operating Officer James Bond said increased requests from companies for his management training services, which among other things focus on ways to boost productivity, have tripled LMA’s business in the past year.

At Todd C. Olson Estate Brokerage Inc. in Northridge, the first sign that times are changing is last week’s hire of a recruitment director. Todd Olson said his company sold 73 homes in March, up from 65 a year earlier, and expects to sell 80 in April. He said home sales in the San Fernando Valley over the past two months have encouraged him to hire 25 real estate agents over the next three months to add to the 95 he has now.

“It’s the first time I’ve been in a position to hire in a long, long time,” Olson said.

Companies that are hiring give a wide range of reasons, but in most cases, they do not cite those commonly given for the region’s recovery, particularly earthquake repairs or quake-related aid. One thing many have in common is a growth in their business, often because they’ve found success in creating new products.

In Chatsworth, Haas Automation Inc. and Fadal Engineering Co.--competitors that make high-precision metal-cutting devices for manufacturers--in recent years have hired dozens of new employees.

Haas has gone from three employees a decade ago to 200 today, and is still hiring for a handful of jobs. Company President Gene Haas said the growth is due to increased sales of Haas products, in part because companies “are making a choice between capital and human labor,” he said. Simply put, Haas’ machines boost productivity, but not payrolls at the companies that buy them.

Amgen Inc., the Thousand Oaks biotechnology giant, introduced two innovative drugs in the past four years and posted a record $383.3-million profit last year. Since 1987, its work force has jumped from 344 to more than 3,000, and although hiring has slowed, the company may add more than 100 jobs this year.

But Amgen’s growth is hardly typical. For most local businesses, the recent years have been marked by layoffs, followed by more layoffs.

Companies “are getting to the point that they can’t lay off any more,” said Bond, the Leadership Management Associates official. “They are down to skeletal staffs.” And so, to remain competitive, companies are turning to firms like his, which provides one-on-one training to managers, in hopes of spurring new products instead of relying on layoffs, Bond said.

Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County, said financially pinched companies are being driven to find new ways to cut costs, producing “an un-traditional recovery” in which new jobs are indeed cropping up, but in unexpected places.

One fast-growing industry in Los Angeles County this year, Kyser said, is business services--which includes consultants, printers and temporary services, a trend that may indicate that companies are getting more business but are still wary about hiring full-time employees. “Maybe the characteristic of this economy is not recovery per se, but new markets emerging,” he said.

Local employers that are adding workers seem to have a keen sense that they are the exception. Nearly all say they are besieged with highly educated, experienced applicants, many of whom have been laid off from other jobs. Some companies with jobs to fill are so inundated with applicants that they are reluctant to say openly that they are hiring.

“I literally have a pile on my desk of 700 to 800 applications. And we don’t advertise,” said Dean de Caussin, vice president of management information systems and marketing at Fadal, the machine tools company. Fadal has grown to 280 employees from 207 in the last year, as the company continues to win business away from Japanese rivals in the smaller machine tools market.

“A while back, it was really crazy,” de Caussin said. “I would get 10 to 20 applicants a day who were just walk-ins. . . . Where these people are coming from I don’t know.”

“It used to be more work to find people. Now it is a lot of work to do the screening” of job applicants, LMA’s Bond said.

Laid-off defense workers make up a large portion of the local army of job-seekers. Last year, when Litton Industries offered more than 100 new positions at its data systems division in Agoura Hills, applicants numbered literally in the thousands, said Robert Knapp, Litton public relations director.

The division was hiring thanks to an Army subcontract for a new missile detection system, but overall, Litton’s Valley-area work force is now 3,200, down from about 4,200 in 1990, and is expected to continue to shrink slowly this year, Knapp said. The data systems division was able to fill engineering jobs that required eight to 12 years of experience almost entirely with local people, Knapp said.

The so-called recovery looks even more elusive to those seeking a job. But a lucky few have begun to benefit from a change in the economy.

For the first time since graduating from college four years ago, Jim Blayney, 28, is working in the profession for which he was trained

Blayney, who in college learned some technical writing and whose degree is in journalism, was just hired as a technical writer at Haas Automation. He had struggled for years as a retail clothing and industrial packaging salesman--jobs he never wanted, and pursued only “as a matter of survival,” he said. “You think maybe this can last awhile, and I’ll just make some money.”

Getting a job as a technical writer or journalist in 1990 “was impossible,” he said. When he finally quit his sales job earlier this year after the company asked him to move to San Bernardino, Blayney once again sought a writing job. He got the Haas job by answering a want ad in a newspaper, a turn of events he considers unbelievable.

“I had never heard of anything like that, unless it’s for someone saying, ‘You sell our product, and you don’t make anything until you sell it,’ ” said Blayney, noting that he saw the same telemarketing and sales jobs advertised in 1990.

But it may be a while before most job-seekers will be so lucky. Kyser predicts that job growth in Southern California will not really take off until 1995. What is being seen now in the Valley and surrounding areas is more like a prelude to a full recovery, he said.

But for some employers, the still-dormant economy means growth.

At JVS Career Transition in Woodland Hills, a nonprofit agency that helps counsel job-seekers, the staff has doubled to six in two years as more companies retain JVS to help employees they are about to lay off, said Claudia Finkel, director of outplacement services.

Finkel’s agency exemplifies the irony of the current job market. JVS gives soon-to-be-laid-off workers help with job-hunting skills and, if they can’t find work, counsels them to consider techniques for becoming self-employed.