by Sue Shellenbarger
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Lots of employers would like to be able to hire cheap, temporary teams of seasoned pros with experience managing $2 billion investment portfolios, running ad campaigns or earning Ph.D.s in neuroscience.

But few know the secret to finding temps of that caliber: Look on playgrounds and at PTA meetings.

The decision among some highly educated women to stay home with children is sparking a countertrend: The rise of the mommy "SWAT team." The acronym, for "smart women with available time," is one mother's label for all-mom teams assembled quickly through networking and staffing firms to handle crash projects. Employers get lots of voltage, cheap, while the women get a skills update and a taste of the professional challenges they miss.

 
Here are a few flexible-staffing firms that find work for at-home mothers:
• FlexibleExecutives.com
• FlexibleResources.com
• FlexperienceConsulting.com
• MomCorps.com
• On-Ramps.com

The University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School was able to muster an "incredibly talented" team with eight at-home mothers -- including a Stanford University Ph.D. in neuroscience, a University of Virginia M.B.A., an attorney and a former news executive -- by tapping female staffers' neighborhood networks, says Mindy Storrie, Kenan-Flagler's director of leadership.

The team taught leadership skills to 100 M.B.A. candidates last year by role-playing difficult management situations with them and critiquing their performances. The simulation training was so successful that enrollment doubled this spring and Kenan-Flagler made it mandatory for leadership training. Cost to the B-school: $21 an hour per woman.

In another case, a team of five at-home moms hopped on a one-month project at Lending Tree to rewrite 600 job descriptions after several acquisitions and integrate them into its organization chart. "I was very impressed with the caliber of women" delivered by MomCorps, an Atlanta staffing firm, says Kathy Fritzsche, vice president, rewards, for the online lending exchange. Read more.