Midwest IT Survival

Does the MidWest really need recruiting "want"?

For his first post of 2010, Rands shares his perspective on the need for ensuring the recruiting process carries the theme of making the desired candidates feel wanted, both from the company recruiter as well as the hiring manager. The article is well written as we have all come to expect from Rands in taking the example of a candidate, Jesse, who has accepted a position extended by Rands but at the final hour, declines the offer to stay with Jesse’s current employer. Rands’s conclusion is that Jesse wasn’t made to feel “wanted” enough to leave his current employer.

As I read the article, I reflected on my almost 20 years of IT experience in the MidWest and I could appreciate Rands’s supposition of “wanted-ness” driving employee employer alignment, but I could not find any parallel experiences in my past nor any stories from peers that could mirror this “wanted-ness”. So, I got to thinking:

“It seems difficult to refute “wanted-ness” as solid goal for all IT organizations regardless of geographic predilection. What might make it less of a priority for a MidWestern company to employ such talent attraction tactics as Rands supposes? ”

This first thing that comes to my mind is the labor pool. If you are working in a labor market that favors MidWestern companies as I’ve attempted to define them in this blog, your labor pool maybe heavily impacted by some/all of the following:

• Aging work force
• Younger work force moving out of the area
• The “brain drain” or local college grads leaving the area upon graduation
• Buy instead of Build IT mentality

NPR has a good article on the perspective of the “brain drain” on the MidWest labor market here if you haven’t been exposed to this concept prior.

Thus, if the labor pool is known to be composed of relatively few super starts in any given category, do MidWestern IT organizations need to go to great lengths to offer rock star recruiting techniques or put energy into creating a high degree of “wanted-ness”? I think the answer is: not really.

But wait you might say, doesn’t Economics 101 say if the supply is trending low, and demand is trending high (you need to hire someone = trending high), then MidWestern companies should be investing heavily in “wanted-ness” to attract top IT talent to meet demand?

Here is where I offer that the “Buy instead of Build IT mentality” drives the demand curve back down. If an IT organization is conducting significantly more “buy” activities than “build” activities, the labor demand is less for that rock star engineer, but rather, an engineer that can work with the vendor’s organization to integrate the vendor’s technology into the company’s existing technology. Thus, a rock star engineer, who wants to be building not integrating, who is offered a highly generous compensation package along with “want”, would be easily disappointed and look for a more pro-build opportunity in short order. So again, the economics coupled with the “Buy” emphasis drives down the demand curve so it is more inline with the labor pool supply curve.

With the demand curve inline with the supply curve and the overall “rock star engineer” need being eclipsed by the value proposition provided by the “Buy” vendor equals a strong excuse for a MidWestern company to skip going above and beyond to create a sense of “wanted-ness” for ultimately more average hires.

The second thing that comes to mind is the labor market itself. In my opinion and from the limited researched I was able to conduct, the decade of the 90s drove up the demand for IT resources in the MidWest. The dot-com bubble bursting in the 00s took the MidWest IT labor market backwards significantly without a subsequent major recovery. To put that perspective to numbers, from a report from the Center for Urban Economic Development, University of Illinois at Chicago, the below graph shows the year over year change in IT industry employment across the entire US:

Breaking this data down more regionally and comparing the major MidWest city of Chicago, IL to other non-MidWest major cities such as Dallas, Boston and San Francisco for their 1999-2005 IT industry employment shows all non-MidWest markets seeing greater net job increases for the period compared to Chicago.

Even less scientific, a recent same day search of Monster.com, Inc. for “Information Technology” jobs using the default search settings for the following cities reflected a similar perspective: major cities outside the MidWest tend to have at least four times as many job postings as MidWest cities.

Cities from CUED list above:

Chicago, IL 628
Boston, MA 831
Dallas, TX 582
Los Angeles, CA 623
San Francisco, CA 455
San Jose, CA 407
Seattle, WA 406
Washington, DC 2110

Other Cities:

Atlanta, GA 608
Cleveland, OH 127
Cincinnati, OH 132
Detroit, MI 183
Saint Louis, MO 218

With MidWest IT needs being significantly less aggressive than higher IT resource demanding areas such as from the coasts, do MidWest IT Organizations really need to invest heavily in the “want”? My opinion with this data suggests no, this isn’t a priority compared to other regions of the US.

Ok, what is the point of all this? My analysis suggests:

Although Rands makes a compelling argument for the value of ensuring the “want” is pervasive throughout the recruiting/hiring process, that value is significantly impacted by the region of the US. Specifically, that value is significantly decreased in the MidWest where the labor pool in conjunction with the labor market suggest fewer and fewer qualified resources are competing for fewer and fewer jobs. Although somewhat cavalier to title this article “Not Wanted” when indeed, a job opening by definition means “want” to some degree; the need for a MidWestern IT organization to go to great lengths to create a culture of “want” in the hiring and recruiting process seems to be unneeded.

Anyone see a glaring oversight in this analysis? Anyone have a compelling argument that suggests another perspective increases the “want” value in the MidWest IT recruiting process?