Hi Sig, Dell is recruiting in North Carolina! :)Leigh
tscn.com -
Companies Scour North Carolina Campuses for Workers
Mar. 25 (The News & Observer/KRTBN)--There was a time, before the labor shortage, when a college kid actually had to look for a job. Back then, soon-to-be graduates would wrestle over type size on resumes, make awkward cold calls to human-resource people and be subjected to terms like "entry-level" and "night shift."
Then the economy boomed. And boomed. And what the world needed most was workers.
That's when some of America's most powerful companies went back to school.
"Industry people are here every week," N.C. State Chancellor Marye Anne Fox says. They're looking for a piece of Centennial Campus. Corning, for example, just called because it wants in, she says. It would follow Lucent, which is opening an office there.
"Lucent people say one of the main reasons they came to Centennial Campus is they need network engineers and they need to be near them if they're going to get them," says Mark Crowell, associate vice chancellor for technology transfer and industry research at N.C. State.
This is life in the training pen, where jobs far outstrip the number of qualified bodies. Competition for workers is so fierce that companies are cozying up to professors, and business students are being offered $10,000-a-month summer internships. They return for a second year at school with job offers already in their pockets.
"Before, it wasn't so competitive, and career centers were begging you to come," says Mark Gogal, manager of corporate employment for Interpath, Carolina Power & Light's telecommunications subsidiary. "They were saying, 'Please, please come. Hire our people.' Now, especially in the space we're in, there are so many of us, we're now trying to knock the doors down and get in front of these folks who have influence."
Cisco just announced it's doubling its staff in the next two years. Interpath doubled up in the last two. IBM, Nortel, Ericsson, they're are all looking for people, as are many of the area's start-ups and stay-ons.
Recruiters are still used for finding new people, as are Web sites, headhunters and the old-fashioned method of placing ads in the classified sections of newspapers. Poaching clusters of people from other companies isn't unheard of, either. But the sum of those tactics is still not enough. There are just too many jobs to fill.
So companies have started to go straight to the source, the universities, where thousands of students -- undergrads as well as graduate students -- are ripe and ready to be plucked.
"We can't hire the number of experienced people that we really need. They just don't exist," says Mimi Fletcher, manager of employment for Cisco. "We've got to be able to grow our own."
That meant hiring a full-time university relations representative, establishing a baseline networking certification program for community colleges and universities in the state, sponsoring faculty research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, State and Duke, and offering Cisco as a source of case studies at the schools.
"Now we have first-hand knowledge of the work the students are doing," says Maureen Lowney, the company's university rep. "You have to have solid relationships with these universities if you're going to get the top talent out of them."
And the schools are taking note. UNC, for example, this week opened an"e-hatchery." An open space with whiteboard walls in the basement of the McColl Building at Kenan-Flaglar Business School will serve as a place for students to cultivate business ideas. It's not an incubator because they're not businesses yet, just ideas. Honchos from Dell Computer, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Cabletron Systems have already toured the site.
Dell, in fact, gave UNC $20,000 to start it -- part of the $80,000 it's given to the school this year alone -- as well as providing computers. The other companies gave UNC $30,000 each this year.
So why are these giant companies bothering with a pre-incubator -- a place for students who want to run their own ship instead of working for someone else?
"Ideas come and go. People are here for the long haul," says Robert Sullivan, dean of the school and the man behind the idea. "What they're looking for are creative people, and if you give them the opportunity to be successful and put them in this creative environment, then it's like an infection."
"Hatchery" is a good word. Maybe "Petri dish" is better. And the companies, like scientists in a lab, will sit back and watch.
"What's in it for them is our students. They want people, and we're the source," says Julie Collins, senior associate dean of UNC's business school. Take Dell. Last year, the Texas computer giant snatched five of the 230 graduates for permanent jobs, says Mindy Storrie, director of career services. This year, another eight have already signed on.
"They're not in it to make money off selling us computers," Collins says. "They're in it for us to be a provider of human capital for them."
In Chapel Hill, if money is flowing to the university because companies are thirsty for people, in Durham, it's funneling straight into the pockets of the students.
Consider what it's like at Fuqua School of Business these days, where a student's summer internship could bring him $10,000 a month, plus another $4,000 for moving expenses, plus all living expenses paid. The companies don't waste time waiting for talented students to graduate. They can't. But they have to give to get. So if the intern meets expectations, the dough starts to flow.
"The companies now look at the summer job as a major part of their recruiting," says professor John McCann, "so they come in with these big package deals."
The companies think, "'We have a decided edge; we've shown you a good time,'" says Dan Nagy, who runs the career services and placement office. "A lot of the firms do a lot of wining and dining -- in New York, they take them to ballgames, parties on boats. If they like them, they try to get the wheels going even before they go back to school."
That means, if an offer is made, the typical deal for a $100,000 salary is sweetened with, say, a $30,000 sign-on bonus, $2,500 in stock options and payment for the student's second year of tuition, which at Duke is $27,000.
"So, it's essentially a golden handcuff," says Nagy, who is starting to see these kinds of deals every day but still reveals a touch of disbelief. "They're not spending all this money for their health. They're getting some pretty good work out of them, but also it's a courting process."
By Carlene Hempel
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