Sunday, July 26, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: A rare economic success story
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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@roanoke.com
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Dan Casey
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An unusual job posting came across my desk recently, thanks to a reader who shall remain nameless.
It was for an Indian immigration expert at Virginia Transformer Corp. Not your average job listing, right?
But that wasn't the most unusual thing about the position.
The No. 1 necessary skill listed was, "Must be of Indian descent."
"Imagine the uproar if it [the ad] said 'Caucasian,' " my correspondent noted.
He was exactly right. In most cases something like that is flatly illegal because it's discriminatory.
So I called Virginia Transformer and spoke to Bill Goad, its human resources director. What emerged was an even more interesting story about a local company that's growing like gangbusters despite the recession and to a certain extent because of it.
First, about that ad: Goad called the qualification poorly worded and said it was a mistake. (Advertised at $45,000 to $55,000, the position is still open.)
"An American could do this job, but they'd have to live four to five years in India first to learn the culture," he said.
That launched us into a discussion of why the privately held company needs an Indian immigration expert at all. And that's where the conversation turned more interesting.
With plants or major offices in Roanoke; Pocatello, Idaho; Chihuahua, Mexico; and New Delhi, India, Virginia Transformer is one of a handful of multinational companies headquartered in Roanoke. (Others include the petroleum services software company Meridium and Pesco-Beam, which manufactures and sells environmental technology equipment.)
Virginia Transformer manufactures large industrial transformers for use in mining, electric utilities, urban transit and energy pipeline industries as well as some others. It has customers in North America, South America and the Middle East.
The size of its work force has almost doubled in the past five years, from 365 employees early in 2004 to nearly 700 right now, said company President Prab Jain, a former General Electric engineer who bought Virginia Transformer in 1982.
"Twenty years ago we had only about 90 employees," Jain told me last week. He declined to reveal the company's annual earnings.
One of the ways the company has been able to grow its business is through automation of its administrative and manufacturing processes at plants in Roanoke, Mexico and Idaho. That helps keep the cost of its products competitive.
Most, if not all, of that automation is conceived and designed at its offices in India, which is Jain's homeland. And most of the workers there are Indian.
To familiarize them with Virginia Transformer's business, they're brought here to the Roanoke headquarters or to the Idaho plant for four to six months. And therein lies the need for an Indian immigration expert, Jain said.
For Indians who have never lived in the United States, "there are a lot of challenges here," Jain said.
Those range from simple everyday skills, such as driving, to much broader aspects of life such as culture, food and faith. There's a minefield of federal laws and regulations governing temporary workers, too.
The company needs an expert on those issues who can also serve as a mentor to Indians while they're here.
"We want them to be comfortable, to be taken care of," Jain said.
Virginia Transformer's growth is not at all over, and that was another aspect to the conversation that was so interesting.
Jain expects the company will be adding 30 to 40 more employees just to its Roanoke sales department in the next 12 to 18 months, and 20 engineers (the company now employs 120). Goad said they're forecasting 30 percent growth a year for the next three years.
All of that seemed extraordinary given the current economic doldrums. Jain and Goad explained it this way:
Much of the stimulus money the federal government is dumping into our economy is for energy and transportation infrastructure, and those are among Virginia Transformer's largest business segments: the grid that supplies electricity across the United States and urban transit systems such as subways and light rail.
The nation's electric grid comprises many regional grids linked together with the large transformers the company manufacturers (they cost up to $1.5 million each). The life span of one of these gizmos is about 40 years, and many of them are reaching that age right around now.
For that reason, the demand is huge. And because of the stimulus, the money to purchase them will be there.
Jain's explanation was longer and more detailed than that, however. Electricity-producing wind farms that are popping up all over this country require transformers, too. And so does another area of infrastructure pipelines that move oil products and natural gas.
You could say that the company is in the enviable position of an ice-seller at a Hokie football game on a 100-degree day.
As many of you know all too well, that is not the situation with many Roanoke Valley companies these days.
Thank goodness there are some with good stories to tell.
Dan Casey's column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
