To All: _____ NEWS REGARDING THE DRYING UP OF RESOURCES ______
In this post:
exchange2000.com
I talked about some fundamental issues that surrounded the lack of available resources.
This story, on one hand, is great for those of us who have been following the y2k market and waiting for the flood gates to open, it basically proves that companies who haven't started in-house projects, and those that may have one currently underway, will have a tough time finding and keeping qualified staff. Thus, projects will have to be turned over to y2k companies, and if those y2k companies, like KEA, are also having to deal with limited resources, then code will eventually flow to the companies who use the AUTOMATED FACTORY APPROACH.
However, we must also take note that these same demand and supply forces will effect the y2k companies who have a need for bodies. They will also face increased expenses which will effect the bottom line.
And Yes, this article appears, once again, in our favorite paper.
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News Alert from Charlotte Business Journal
Mon, 16 Feb 1998
Headline:
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Looking outside the box Labor shortage compels employers to hire from all walks of life
Fifth period. Overhead, at Olympic High School, jets begin the
afternoon arrival push at nearby Charlotte/Douglas International
Airport, but in Michael Belcak's computer lab, another push is on.
Twenty students, like four others who'd been here for the
first-period morning class, peer into computer screens at an
operating system called Windows NT, made by Microsoft Corp.
A few miles away, at the Microsoft Eastern Region Product Support
Services Center, overlooking a lake in a suburban office park, Kevin
Shea, manager, is watching the progress of the students as closely
as they're watching their screens.
"This is exciting, a very different kind of experiment for us," he
says. "I've got a lot of hopes for this."
In a nation facing what President Bill Clinton described in
January as a critical shortage of technology employees, the push is on by companies like Microsoft, America's poster company of computer technology, to recruit and train workers.
In the case of Shea's 750-employee operation, about to undergo a
major expansion, high school graduates specially trained in one of
the company's premiere products, if they don't choose college, might
walk out of Olympic and directly into solid technology jobs with
Microsoft.
At First Union Corp., with 400 openings, Brenda Anderson, vice
president for information technology services, is looking at both
ends of the age spectrum. She believes that not only retirees,
particularly with experience in early-era computers, might be good
information technology workers, but that youngsters now in grade
school, through exposure to First Union computer careers, will
remember the bank in 10 years after they complete high school and
college.
"We're doing a number of things we hope will fill the pipeline
with future resources," she says.
In the tightest segment of a tight job market, Charlotte employers are probing new ways and, they say, rethinking old standards about recruiting, training and other aspects of filling technology jobs. "This is not necessarily futuristic thinking," says Tom Howard, dean of the Corporate Training Center operated by Central Piedmont Community College, which contract-teaches computer design, business computing and other skills for area employers. "This is a survival concept."
At a meeting of the center advisory board a few weeks ago,
officials of Charlotte's major banks, industries such as Lance Inc.
and others brainstormed some of those concepts. Among them was the
notion that recruiting technology personnel through the American
Association of Retired Persons might work. Also, the group discussed
whether high school graduates with only brief, perhaps eight-week
training programs rather than two-year degrees, would permit
employers to promote existing employees trapped in entry-level jobs
because of the lack of replacements. That might ease rampant raiding
and job-hopping.
"What's happening in the marketplace is that we're robbing Peter
to pay Paul," says Howard. "It's a bidding war."
The recruiting sweepstakes takes a toll on the bottom lines of
many technology-heavy companies. Replacing a $20 an hour employee,
whose annual compensation will total $53,700, costs a company
$20,600, says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Recruiting a
middle-level technician making $60,000 through an outside placement
firm typically costs a third of the person's first-year salary, and
those salaries are soaring.
Skilled software writers now typically command $50,000 to $100,000
a year, say officials at Omnium Corp., an area software developer.
At another firm, Quantum Resources, which provides technical staffing
to developers and others, specialists in such high-demand software
programs as Oracle Financial have been bid up to $80 an hour, says
recruiter Aubrey Cohen.
"I recently had someone with one of our banks tell me that some
technical positions had doubled in pay in the last couple of years," adds Howard.
Even with wage escalation, however, employers in Charlotte and
across the country say they have trouble merely finding technical
employees. That was the message in January when the Clinton
administration unveiled a program of grants, creation of an Internet
technology job bank, and a campaign to boost the image of computer
jobs. The government cited a Virginia Polytechnical Institute study
showing 346,000 computer programming and systems support jobs open
in companies of more than 100 workers.
Part of the equation, however, has become whether it's more
economical to hire employees from other companies or bring in
untrained or lowly trained career hoppers, entry-level workers or
retirees. By various estimates, a three- to six-month training
program, typical in some financial and similar technology positions, will cost an employer $50,000 to $100,000, including the new hire's salary and initial reduced productivity.
Those are the kinds of questions increasingly confronting not only
technology companies such as Charlotte's Alydaar Software Inc. and
Keane Inc., major players in the Year 2000 correction industry, but increasingly, hospitals, banks and others that rely on large
computer systems or merely seek trained technical personnel.
For example, at the 80-employee operations center of Bell Atlantic
Nynex Mobile Corp. in University Research Park, Mike Irizarry,
director of network operations, says his company has had success
recruiting specialists leaving the military, particularly for such
jobs as radio frequency engineering.
"A lot of military skills are transferrable, and now, with the
spectrum auctions by the government, we've got a lot of upstart
companies building networks, so competition is increasing." Bell
Atlantic is also working with the University of North Carolina at
Charlotte in co-op programs.
In recruiting, some of Charlotte's largest employers are taking
advantage of what they've already got.
NationsBank Corp., with a 20,000-employee technology staff and
$400 million annual technology budget, is pinning hopes not only on
stepped-up campus recruiting, says Bill York, senior vice president
and chief recruiter, but alternative avenues.
"We haven't quit running ads, job fairs or our relationships with
search firms, but we've found that our No. 1 source of new hires is
employee referrals," he says. "We're going to promote the daylights
out of that program this year," in addition to greater emphasis on
Internet recruiting through links to such technology job sites as
Atlanta-based ComputerJobs Store.
Similarly, Advanced Technology Systems Inc., a fast-growing
consulting firm that specializes in software programming and staff
enhancement, awards financial incentives to its 130 consultants for
bringing aboard other employees, says Deborah Hampton, vice
president.
The company has had success at retaining employees, she says,
through employee ownership. "We look for a sense of
entrepreneurship, for employees that want to stay and help us build
the company."
At Alydaar, Ken Lanspery, vice president for human resources, says employee referrals were its largest source of hires through the
fourth quarter.
But Alydaar is also shopping the graying-temples market,
particularly for retired programmers familiar with legacy
programming languages such as COBOL.
"We see a lot of folks who may have been out of the work force for
some time interested in coming back," adds Don Scott, Keane Inc.
regional manager in Charlotte. Ironically, those programmers
inadvertently created the date faults that could cripple systems now
as they encounter the double-zeros at the end of the 2000 date.
"They caused the problem," jokes Scott. "Maybe they're the best
ones to resolve it."
Probably the most direct example of hiring and training for
information technology jobs, however, is Microsoft.
While a number of Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools offer programs in
Novell, a common disk operating system for IBM-compatible systems
around since 1990, Belcak, work force development specialist and
Olympic High business education teacher, was surprised by a call he
received last summer.
"Jerry Menster, a Microsoft technical account manager, called out
of the clear blue and said, 'We have a program we'd like to tie in
with your school,' " he says. Microsoft was willing not only to
donate $10,000 in software, which Menster installed for configured
workstations, but the company bought textbooks and has volunteered
the $100-per-student outside testing fee necessary for Windows NT
certification.
It also sent Belcak through its own intense, two-week Windows NT
training program for Microsoft support personnel.
"The idea is that if the kid wants to go to college to major in
computer science, he'll be on the right track," says Belcak. "Or, if
he wants to go into the business world, this can give him the tools
and enable him, at the high school level, to at least be eligible to
be interviewed."
The current program qualifies students to test for network
administrator certification, which, notes Belcak, could lead to
starting salaries of $25,000 or so. Next year the program is
expected to be expanded to NT network engineering, jobs that
typically start in excess of $35,000.
Some of those jobs, says Shea, could be with Microsoft.
"Absolutely," he says. "Even for Microsoft, recruiting has become more difficult. There's demand coming from everywhere, and we're expanding the way we look for folks. When we sat down a few months weeks ago to plan our expansion, this was a huge topic. We're going to be doing some major hiring over the next 24 months at this
facility and this could not only help local employers looking for
Windows NT experience, but also help us in our recruiting."
Although Microsoft has hired few high school graduates previously,
"it hasn't been an iron rule," says Shea. As is increasingly true
with technology employers, additional, specialized training is
required after the hire.
That, notes CPCC's Howard, can increase demand for job-changers
with no technical experience, but good, analytical skills.
Shea says Microsoft has found those skills in such professions as
pastors, MBAs and, "for some reason, musicians. Maybe it's their
creativity."
Keane Inc., too, is "putting more emphasis than ever on training,"
says Scott. "We know the pool is shrinking, so we've stepped up
recruiting across the spectrum now. We're putting in a major
training facility at our headquarters in Boston, and plan to train
in excess of 1,000 graduates there in intense, six-week programs
before putting them on assignments this year. We don't draw the line
at requiring someone to have had experience as much as we did three
or four years ago."
Keane will hire 6,000 information technology employees nationwide this year, including 150 in Charlotte. Alydaar, now at 280, will add 50 to 60 in the first half of the year.
First Union is also putting strong emphasis now on hiring basic
college skills, then customizing them. "We have what we call the IT
Associates Program, which is a college recruiting process," says
Anderson. "We provide a three- to six-month formal training program
to help them transition from college into our IT organization." The
bank is also looking harder at internships.
Another company that focuses on information technology specialists
who already have basic two- or four-year computer degrees is
Technology Consulting Inc., says Peter Berst, its senior account
manager in Charlotte. The company calls its approach "IT boot camp,"
or more formally, its information systems management program.
"We assume they have the basic computer science side, so we give
them a business understanding of concepts like task management, time
management and quality assurance," says Berst.
Technology Consulting recruits locally but trains at the company's
Louis-ville, Ky., campus. "The first four weeks cover basics such as Microsoft back office programs and the year 2000 problem. In the remaining weeks, we do either market- or client-demand training,"
says Berst.
Classes typically have 15 students, with new cycles starting every
two weeks. Under client-centered training, businesses such as Belk
Store Services Inc. tailor the second portion of the TCI program to
their specific needs, usually at the rate of $32 to $48 per hour.
Training comes at no cost to the students, unless they leave the
program.
But for First Union, NationsBank, Microsoft and other large
information technology employers, CPCC's Howard says today's greater
emphasis on recruiting and grow-your-own skills development once
employees are on board is more a matter of strategy than solution.
"The long-term solution," he says, "are the kids entering
elementary and middle-school today."
Edward Martin is a Charlotte-based free-lance writer. |
