Hiring is tough
To those who feel that the addition of 150 engineers over the next 6-9 months is not enough, believe me, that is a huge challenge in itself as anyone who has run a small company will attest. Particularly these days good technical people are in great demand. Here in the Dallas area (unemployment rate of 2%) the telecom companies are stealing technical people from each other right and left. While Jenkins said they have not seen pay demands increase YET, I'm sure their projections going forward plan on this. I'm much more comfortable with the stock since the CD is a low labor intensive service with high margins and a quick sales cycle that will bring in the cash needed to ramp up the new hires.
The cost and availability of personel to be hired was a great concern to me a couple of months ago, but I think now the CD revenues will finance the new hires and growth the company is planning. Availability will still be a challenge but I think this company will attract the best. Read this.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) (11/18/97) - Signs of low unemployment are everywhere: on the Internet, in storefront windows, even on outdoor advertising space usually reserved for daily lunch specials.
And, increasingly, they're help wanted notices.
The growing economy and expanding number of jobs have created a
tight job market that is making it difficult for many employers -
from fast food restaurants to large manufacturers like Boeing - to
find workers.
Earlier this month, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan
warned Congress the labor squeeze could soon translate into higher
wages and higher prices. Unemployment has hovered below 5 percent
since June, hitting a 24-year low of 4.7 percent in October.
The shortage of employees is nationwide. It's in big towns. It's
in little towns. It's in manufacturing. It's in clerical positions.
In Wichita, it started with the aircraft industry. More than a
year ago, the city's industrial backbone began growing, and
companies like Boeing, Raytheon Aircraft Co., Learjet Inc. and
Cessna Aircraft Co. needed workers.
In the past year Boeing has hired about 3,000 people at its
plant in Wichita. It now employs 21,500 and officials are looking
for still more workers.
To help deal with the labor shortage, the company has brought in
about 100 workers from the recently-acquired McDonnell Douglas
division in southern California.
''We're still looking for some mechanics and engineering
people,'' said Boeing spokesman Fred Solis. ''The competition with
all the businesses in town has pretty much stretched the resources
locally. We're still looking in our own backyard, but we've had to
expand our search as well.''
At Raytheon, finding an engineer can be worth $2,000. Employees who bring an engineer to the company get $1,000. If the engineer stays with Raytheon for six months, the employee get an additional $1,000. The company has 560 openings, about 100 of which are for engineers.
The problem of having more jobs than job candidates isn't
limited to the aerospace industry.
Kelly Slack, owner of Slack & Associates, a Wichita employment
agency, has noticed fewer calls from job candidates on secretarial,
sales and management jobs.
''Six months ago, I may have gotten 20 to 30 phone calls,'' he
said of an advertised job. ''Now, I'm lucky to get eight or 10.''
To lure qualified employees, companies are improving benefits or
increasing wages, Slack said. As a result, about 80 percent of the
employees he does find are employed but are using the tight labor
market as an opportunity to switch to a better job or get higher
pay.
That can make keeping a good employee hard.
Bob Everlanka, president of Remedy, a Houston-based staffing
company, specializes in finding employees for other companies. But
the tight labor market has business booming for employment
agencies, and Everlanka spends much of his time making sure his own
company is adequately staffed.
This month, he was trying to fill three openings while keeping
other companies from luring away his employees.
''There are head hunters calling my staff all the time,'' he
said.
If finding a permanent employee is hard, temporary seasonal
workers can be even harder to locate. Low unemployment is making it
hard for retailers to find additional holiday help for the second
straight year.
Other employers complain that the job applicants they do get
lack necessary training or work skills.
''It's easy to find someone,'' said Ivan Jenkins, assistant
manager for AJ Menswear in Detroit. ''It's hard to find someone who
will work.''
The labor shortage isn't limited to large urban areas.
Charles Krider, director of the Institute for Public Policy and
Business Research at the University of Kansas, said the healthy
economy has kept many rural communities booming and has halted the
migration to larger, urban areas.
After a weekend of advertising for four full-time waiters or
waitresses, The Mariner restaurant in Great Bend had no responses.
''It's tough in Great Bend,'' said Grover Cobb, the restaurant's
assistant manager. The central Kansas town of 15,000 people is
located in Barton County, which has an unemployment rate of 3
percent.
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