Demand growing for IT workers, group finds

Joe Ochoa, a Web development guru, knows what it feels like to be wanted.<br><br>Mr. Ochoa, 36, and his wife recently spent a night at a luxury hotel in town, courtesy of ServiceLane.com, which was recruiting

Tuesday, April 11th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Joe Ochoa, a Web development guru, knows what it feels like to be wanted.

Mr. Ochoa, 36, and his wife recently spent a night at a luxury hotel in town, courtesy of ServiceLane.com, which was recruiting him for an executive position. To get around the city, the company hired a limousine for them. And just to make certain his wife was on board, the Dallas-based dot.com sent her to a health spa for a day of pampering.

"We really wanted him," said Lee Blaylock, president and chief executive of ServiceLane.com, which over a five-month period has ramped up from seven employees to about 70.

Mr. Ochoa joined the company last month as vice president of Web operations. All the attention "definitely ended up making a difference," he said.

These are good times indeed for workers with the right skills in information technology, as demand for their capabilities continues to grow. Employers have to scramble to fill vacant positions.

A survey released Monday by the Information Technology Association of America reported that employers will create demand for 1.6 million new high-tech positions this year. With demand far outstripping supply, half of these positions - about 843,000 jobs - will go unfilled. That means one in every dozen of the 10 million jobs in the U.S. information-technology industry will be vacant, the Arlington, Va.-based trade group reported.

The greatest need for high-tech workers is at smaller companies whose primary business is unrelated to technology, the group said. About 70 percent of the total demand for all new IT workers will come from such firms. Managers from smaller companies, with between 50 and 99 employees, also reported the highest rate of unqualified applicants and the greatest difficulty in filling positions.

The most common coping strategy for managers lacking permanent high-tech employees is to outsource with temporary and contract employees.

However, the study found, this only shifts the labor-shortage problem. Job-outsourcing firms also report severe shortages of high-tech workers, according to the study.

Some analysts cautioned that the worker shortage doesn't necessarily portend bad news. The high-tech boom has continued for some time despite worker shortages, said Ross DeVol, director of regional studies at the Milken Institute, a think tank based in Santa Monica, Calif.

Many tech firms overemphasize the importance of the worker shortages, he said.
Geographically, Southern states, including Texas, have the largest number of IT workers overall, according to the study. The Midwest has the highest demand for employees, accounting for 35 percent of the total, while Western states account for 28 percent of the demand.

At Texas Instruments Inc., managers are now seeking to fill about 1,200 openings.

Historically, the Dallas-based maker of chips used largely in cellular phones generally has about 500 vacancies, said spokesman Dan Larson.

Last year, TI was so desperate for skilled workers that it paid a total of $600,000 in bonuses to employees who offered candidate referrals. Employees were then entered into a grand prize drawing for a Ford Explorer sport-utility vehicle, which was given to a TI engineer in Houston.

TI, among other high-tech companies, has been seeking to expand the number of skilled foreign workers allowed to get jobs in this country, arguing that the United States is not producing enough engineers who are capable of the intricate work involved in fields such as semiconductor design.

"It's a big frustration," said Larry Ercoline, human resources director for STMicroelectronics NV's chip plant in Carrollton. He said the immigration limits are forcing companies to raid one another for talent, rather than hire recent college graduates who are in the United States on student visas.

But, Mr. Ercoline added, he believes that Dallas-area companies have an advantage over their counterparts in other parts of the country because of the quality of life in the region, including a lower cost of living.
"It is difficult, but we're able to find the right people," said Mr. Ercoline.

Staff writer Vikas Bajaj contributed to this report.