Cashing in on opting out: Kelly Watson launched Career Partners to pair executives in job-sharing arrangements.

SOME critics say the "opt-out revolution" is a myth, but Kelly Watson swears by it. She chose to leave her executive marketing job at the LA. office of Telecom New Zealand after giving birth to her second child because she felt like she couldn't balance her busy family life with a 70-hour work week.

With the advent of her newest venture, El Segundo-based executive staffing firm Career Partners, she is betting that other women--and even some men--are facing the same problem. The company aims to create time and flexibility for career professionals who want a different work-life balance by filling a single high-level, high-demand position with two employees in a job-sharing arrangement.

The executives split the hours, the workload, the travel, the salary, the equity, stock and the bonus.

"I saw the engineers, the lawyers, the executives, who just said, "I can't do it now that I have kids," Watson said. "Guilt took me out because I couldn't give my employer 150 percent and be the supermom who brought cupcakes to preschool. I know there is a coming market need for this huge community of women who have opted out."

The fundamental strategy of Watson's job-sharing company is akin to those used by dating Web sites such as eHarmony and Match.com--pair individuals who share similar values, then have them share a job.

Candidates for job sharing positions fill out a 40-minute profile online and go through a personality analysis.

Companies that want to retain a current employee who they would otherwise lose to the "mommy track," seek out Watson's service, she said. She provides a job-share match for that individual.

She can also match two candidates from scratch for an open position.

Personality traits under consideration include communication style and conflict style. Weaknesses in areas such as adapting to change and forming a team are also considered.

She started with a database of 300 workers and has contracted with about five companies. She has been contacted by companies in New York, Boston and Atlanta, but is concentrating on the L.A. market for the time being. She believes Career Partners could grow into a $100 million company.

"If you have peoples' core values aligned, you can work around a lot of other things because you have commitment and belief in each other," Watson said.

Most recently, Watson placed a couple in a CFO position for Environmental Technologies, a company in east L.A. that recycles refrigerants.

She found Sohinaz Sotoudeh, who has a history in mergers and acquisitions and has worked in the Middle East, where some of Environmental Technology's clients are; and Diana Berger, a CPA with experience in auditing and building financial systems.

After a team is formed, Career Partners continues to counsel them for the remainder of their time at the company to ensure that they are working well together.

"If you had a marriage counselor checking in on you every month asking you to talk about your problems, your relationship would benefit. It is the same idea," said Watson.

Technology companies and financial institutions have taken an interest in her services. She works with medium-sized businesses with annual revenues of about $500 million per year who need staff to do M.B.A.-level work.

When Watson started the company last year, the first thing she did was visit moms clubs, alumni organizations and maternity stores to build up a bank of candidates. She spent time doing online initiatives, including blogging on women-targeted Web sites to test the waters for interest in this type of service.

"Recruiters had stopped calling a lot of these women and they weren't connected to the corporate world anymore," Watson said. "We are dragging them out of the woodwork. Watson realized how difficult it could be to work and be a mother after she had her first child. At the time, she was a vice president of marketing at a Los Angeles company. After taking a short hiatus, she returned to her corner office with its glass walls, ready to work but committed to nursing. When she asked if she could have blinds so she could use a breast pump in privacy, her boss was mortified.

'Not their culture'

"It was so not their culture. They told me I could pump in the little shower room where the guys literally hung up their drawers after they worked out on their lunch break," Watson said. "At the time I didn't question it. I was trying to pretend that nothing was different. It's more about how you can keep going and pretend you aren't a mom."

When she quit Telecom New Zealand after her second child, she went back to school at Loyola Marymount University to get her M.B.A. One day, while she was driving home from class, she heard a report on NPR about two women who job-shared in a leadership role at Fleet Bank in Boston.

"I thought: this is it. If we can bottle what they just said, we could tap the big opt-out community and help companies face the leadership shortage," she said.

She graduated in May 2006 and started Career Partners in August. She financed the company with her own money, and she is starting a round of investments from friends and family. After she compiles case studies, she plans to try for venture capital money.

"It's not a capital intensive business because so much is virtual," she said.

She and her five employees work from home.

Some companies have started offering programs to retain or draw in women who are opting out. Lehman Bros. Encore program tries to recruit professionals who have left the work force and are interested in resuming their careers. Accenture, the management consulting company offers FlexLeave, a service that allows employees to accrue a sabbatical.

"There is a growing trend toward non-traditional work options," said Barry Asin, executive vice president and chief analyst for Los Altos-based Staffing Industry Analysts Inc., a research and analysis firm coveting the contingent work force. "We'll see more and more models like this over the long term."

Career Partners

Founded: 2006

Core Business: Matches two executives together to share a single position

Employees in 2007: Five and an outsourced staff in India

Goal: To tap the pool of highly educated and highly trained executives who have left the job market by choice or the need to take care of their families

Driving Force: The combination of a talent shortage and the large opt-out market

BY SARAH FILUS

Staff Reporter