Monster.com: What does UpCast do?

Geoff Cairns: We are building software that enables a company to create customized portals. It's hush hush right now, though, so I won't say more.

Mc: How long have you been in business?

GC: Since October 1999.

Mc: How many employees and contractors do you have?

GC: We have five people on staff, and the number of contractors varies from about two to four people.

Mc: Do the contractors work in the office or at home? Is there any telecommuting by regular employees?

GC: The contractors are all over the country. The regular staff members are in the office, except for one who telecommutes because of a family situation.

Mc: How do you work on a group project with people spread out around the country?

GC: We do conference calls, Net meetings, screen sharing and things like that to keep everyone in the loop. In my last job at Hewlett-Packard, I worked with people all across the country. I don't need to be face-to-face to get things done.

Mc: Why did you hire a contractor? What parts of the software are the contractors working on?

GC: I hired contractors because it’s sometimes difficult to have experts on staff. Some of the better professionals available are not for hire, but are available for rent. We're using a contractor for the user interface, and another one is specifically handling database design and data management issues -- the elegant architecture around data elements.

When there's an ownership issue, we use regular employees. The core code we do ourselves because we want to make sure we have ownership. There are no questions, and it's locked down legally.

Mc: What does hiring a contractor (versus a regular employee) allow your company to do?

GC: We decided from the get-go that we would only hire employees under special circumstances. When you're a young company you don’t necessarily want to get too heavy on financial commitments too early, so you pick your hires. Sometimes you don't need those skills all the time. For example, with some of the marketing, if I want certain copy to get written, or a message to be generated, I don't need people on staff full-time for that just yet, but I know people out there who will do that quickly on contract.

Mc: How was the MTM hiring process?

GC: My partner handled most of it. Time was very important because we had a new piece of work where we had a six-week deadline. We had people on the hook within a week through the Monster process.

The difficult part is taking that leap of faith of hiring someone and signing a contract sight unseen. With someone you already know you can do it with a gentleman's agreement...there's a trust factor there. Then you can take care of the contract stuff.