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Area companies are searching for ways to increase the local talent pool of high-tech workers, especially in the engineering sector.
06/01/2005
Business Journal
Local demand for these workers is actually a reflection of a national trend, says Steven Kraut, vice president of business development for 4Jobs.com, an online network of more than 6,000 general and industry-specific job boards.
Kraut says the information-technology and engineering sectors currently account for about half the listings on his company’s sites. In New York, they account for about 40 percent of the listings.
The trend has been most noticeable for the last three quarters, Kraut says.
Syracuse companies are among those battling for the available workers. For them, the need for high-tech workers is a nice problem to have.
"Sensis and other companies locally, we’re doing very well and we continue to be able to look for those types of people," says Michelle Hoffman, director of human resources for air-traffic systems at Sensis Corporation in DeWitt. "We’re really feeling the demand heat up in the last six to nine months."
Sensis, which employs more than 500 companywide and 450 in Central New York, currently has 38 job openings. Most of those are for high-tech positions.
Hoffman says the biggest demand at her company is for electrical engineers, systems engineers, and those with a background in hardware or software.
Reaching outside the market
Successful recruiting, Hoffman says, does not mean pirating people from other local companies. Sensis and other local high-tech companies are working together to try to draw more engineers to the region and convince new graduates to remain, she says.
Hoffman says one example is the daVinci Project.
The project started in 1997 as a cooperative effort among area technology companies aimed at bringing more qualified high-tech workers to the region. Its main effort is an online job site at davincijobs.com.
The site has been redesigned and will relaunch this month, says Thomas Mushow, executive director of the project. The recent high demand for engineers has prompted the daVinci Project to look at additional recruiting methods, Mushow adds.
The site currently has more than 650 jobs listed on it, up from 50 or 60 just two or three years ago when the high-tech sector took a serious hit across the nation. The site’s focus is on high-tech jobs, but it does include listings for other industries as well.
One of the project’s main goals is to get all the jobs available at local high-tech companies listed on its site, Mushow says. Currently, he says it’s almost impossible to tell exactly how many high-tech jobs are available in the Syracuse area because so many companies and job seekers use highly specialized, niche Web sites.
"We need to have all those jobs in one place," he says. "That looks better to a job seeker. They will look at that and say ‘Wow, Syracuse is really booming.’ "
Mushow says Syracuse companies are generally looking for workers in very specialized fields, such as electrical or radar-systems engineering, for example. And companies like Lockheed Martin have numerous security and clearance requirements because of the sensitive nature of government work.
Both of those facts present additional recruiting challenges, Mushow says.
In addition to the Web-site redesign, Mushow is working on an extensive marketing campaign to highlight the demand for high-tech workers in the area. He hopes to launch it within the next few months.
The campaign will probably cost about $1 million. Member companies and public money pay for the daVinci Project’s work. A marketing campaign will help change the perception among job seekers that Syracuse lacks multiple job prospects, Mushow says.
"The better the economy looks in a region, the better for us," he says. "Engineers like challenging career opportunities. They want an area with a lot of possibilities. We need to show them that’s here."
Cooperation like the daVinci Project is important because a key to attracting more talent is demonstrating that Syracuse is not a "one-horse town," Hoffman says.
"Central New York is not Silicon Valley, and there’s a perception that more of what we do here is manufacturing or union-related," she says. "But if you’re an engineer or an IT person, you can come here and work for more than one place. It’s about getting people to recognize there are challenging work opportunities here."
One of the issues that often comes up with job seekers from outside the area is finding work for spouses, Hoffman says Companies also need to focus on the other benefits of Central New York, she adds. Quality of life, cost of living, and schools are some of the region’s strong selling points, especially for families, she says.
Chip Eschenfelder, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin’s local site in Liverpool, also says companies need to concentrate on drawing new talent to the area.
"It’s much better to grow the total number of engineers in Central New York rather than just trade people back and forth," he says.
Lockheed announced in the fall it would add 500 employees in Liverpool, mostly engineers and other high-tech workers. The company will have added about 200 new workers by June, Eschenfelder says.
Lockheed’s greatest demand is in areas like electrical, mechanical, radar-systems, and software engineering, he adds. It employs more than 2,200 in Liverpool and 130,000 companywide.
Call from home
One possibly fruitful recruiting target for local companies is people who have ties to Central New York, but have since moved away because they found better opportunities elsewhere. After Lockheed announced its hiring plans in the fall, many responses were from former area residents looking to come home, Eschenfelder says.
"It’s easier to sell someone on Central New York who’s lived here," he says.
Part of the nationwide demand for engineers can be traced to age. Many of the nation’s current engineers are members of the baby-boom generation who are rapidly approaching retirement, Eschenfelder says.
Companies are doing everything they can to shore up their engineering ranks in anticipation of a mass exodus of talent from the industry, he explains.
The problem is magnified by a drop in the number of people graduating with engineering and other technical degrees, he adds.
High-tech businesses can’t afford to think only about short-term solutions to recruiting challenges, Eschenfelder says. Lockheed and other companies throughout the country regularly participate in events like National Engineers Week, which aims to stimulate interest among students in math and science.
"We have to think 20 years down the line," Eschenfelder says.
Article by BizJournal.com
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