Firms scramble for tech workers

It’s not like the late ’90s, but the pinch is starting to be felt

Friday, Sept. 22, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Raphael Talisman⁄The Gazette High housingcosts and longcommutes compound the difficulty of finding high-tech workers, saysGary S. Murray Sr., chairman of the Maryland Economic Development Commission.

Today, that process has stretched to a month or more. And like many tech companies in Maryland and across the nation, InfoZen has stretched its recruiting tactics.

‘‘We use more online job boards such as Monster.com and ClearanceJobs.com,” said William Boyd, senior vice president for technical solutions at InfoZen. ‘‘We’ve even talked with a few people from Craigslist. But word of mouth is still one of the best ways we find people.”

The continued low unemployment rate in Maryland — which was at 4.3 percent in July, below the 2003 level of 4.6 percent, according to seasonally adjusted state figures — and economic growth have caused a tighter labor market, analysts said. That has forced companies to compete more aggressivly for technical employees, especially the high-end ones.

But the situation is not as difficult for managers and as lucrative for employees as during 1999 and 2000, when the state’s July unemployment rate stood at 3.6 percent.

‘‘It’s not like the late ’90s when things were going crazy,” said Matthew Kazmierczak, vice president for research and industry analysis with the AeA, formerly the American Electronics Association, a Washington, D.C., tech industry association. ‘‘But the economy is more stable now than a year ago, and job growth is picking up.”

After losing jobs in 2002 and 2003, the high-tech sector in Maryland added almost 3,000 positions in 2004, the last year such figures were available for individual states, according to a recent AeA report. That job growth was the third highest in the nation, behind only Virginia and Florida.

The tighter labor pool is seen across the United States, where the unemployment rate dropped to 4.8 percent in July from 5 percent a year ago. There were job gains in tech fields across the nation during 2005 to 5.6 million, though the total is well below the 2000 peak of 6.6 million, Kazmierczak said.

‘‘There are some areas of the country expanding faster than others, such as Virginia, Florida and Maryland,” he said. ‘‘Maryland is particularly aided by improvements in the medical technology field. The development of companies around the National Institute of Standards and Technology along the I-270 corridor has also helped.”

Companies are offering higher salaries and other benefits, or at least reviewing their packages, representatives from several area businesses said.

The average annual salary for a Maryland high-tech employee was $74,981 in 2004, the ninth highest in the U.S. and a 3.5 percent increase from 2003, according to AeA. That was 83 percent higher than the average overall private-sector salary in Maryland. Average tech wages in the state have increased each year since 2000, bucking a national trend that saw salary declines in 2001 and 2002.

‘‘It’s a very competitive market,” said Todd Johnson, principal with Intact Technology, a Landover IT business founded in 1994. ‘‘It’s not where it was in the late ’90s, but it’s probably about where it should be ... We are looking at improving what we offer employees in salaries and benefits to keep up.”

More marketing efforts

Officials with Convergence Technology Consulting, a 23-employee network engineering and integration business that recently moved from Bowie to Glen Burnie, has begun going to job fairs and calling on other companies that are closing departments to recruit employees.

‘‘We’re doing a lot more marketing of our company in general,” said Larry Letow, president and COO.

The number of career and job fairs, including those at area colleges and universities, being conducted is increasing, said Rick Harris, COO of the Tech Council of Maryland.

‘‘There appears to be a pent-up demand for skilled workers at the mid-manager and manager levels,” Harris said. ‘‘Our members are participating in a number of both online job fairs and face-to-face job fairs.”

In May, the Tech Council joined with Rockville Economic Development Inc. and others to organize a first-time conference and career fair for postdoctoral fellows. More than 300 postdocs and some 50 employers participated, and that is expected to grow substantially for next year’s conference, Harris said.

At BroadSoft, a Gaithersburg provider of Internet telephony software, recruiting and retention efforts are aided by awards and other recognition, as well as the company’s reputation in the industry, said Scott Wharton, vice president of marketing.

Employees have come as far as Texas and Montreal, but most already knew BroadSoft executives, he said. BroadSoft has been in a growth spurt the last 18 months or so, almost doubling its workforce to 225 employees, Wharton said.

To find executives such as David Bukovsky, who was recently hired as vice president of products after eight years with Cisco Systems, BroadSoft usually uses professional recruiters, Wharton said. ‘‘They help to scan the universe,” he said.

Bukovsky said he already met BroadSoft CEO Michael Tessler and other executives and knew about the company’s work. ‘‘When you work in the industry for years, you tend to know the players,” Bukovsky said.

Location often helps. Acela Technologies of Frederick is aided by the number of people who commute to sites in or close to Washington, D.C., who want a shorter commute, CEO and president Daryl A. Boffman said.

‘‘We haven’t had a lot of trouble finding quality employees,” said Boffman, who is seeking two more people to add to the 13-member workforce.

The commuting issue relates to the lack of affordable housing in many areas of Maryland that officials are having to address, said Gary S. Murray Sr., chairman of the Maryland Economic Development Commission, a public-private group created in 1995.

‘‘Housing was not an economic development issue four years ago,” said Murray, founder of HumanVision LLC of Landover, a venture capital firm. He also built two multimillion-dollar technology businesses before selling them. ‘‘If employees can’t find housing close to their jobs, they have to live farther away and drive longer commutes.”

Training and education, including getting more students involved in tech fields early, are parts of the equation, said Aris Melissaratos, secretary of the state Department of Business and Economic Development. ‘‘It’s a good problem to have since it shows that we are moving to full employment,” he said.

Lack of specialists

Another factor complicating the situation is an apparent lack of specialists, Letow said.

‘‘We don’t see a lot of people trying to excel in one area,” said Letow, who is in the market for seven new hires. ‘‘There are a lot of generalists but not many experts. That leads me to believe that the salaries for entry-level positions are so high that it might not be driving the need for those generalists to reach for the next level.”

Some companies are looking to hire people from other countries, but that is complicated by immigration and visa laws, Kazmierczak said. Doctoral students from other nations spend years getting their degrees in the United States and many of them want to stay to work in this nation but find they can’t, he said.

‘‘It’s somewhat of a tragedy,” Kazmierczak said. ‘‘Congress needs to separate the legal immigration debate from the illegal one.”

Security process improves

Because much of the technical work in Maryland involves government security, employees who already have security clearances are in high demand. That’s especially the case at InfoZen, which specializes in threat assessment and credentialing.

The company won a $148 million contract earlier this year from the Transportation Security Administration to manage an automated system that verifies the identities of transportation employees such as airline pilots and dock workers.

‘‘The final clearances still take a long time, but we have seen some improvements in the process for obtaining interim security clearances,” said Boyd, who has six technical job openings currently at the 75-employee company.