InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
November 1, 1999
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"An hour can make a difference between getting a job filled and not," says Lauren Day, manager of the 10-month-old permanent staffing division at the Eliassen Group, an IT consulting agency in Wakefield, Mass. The division places IT talent in client operations. "We had that happen. A hiring manager wasn't available, and the candidate had a few offers. They waited 2-1/2 hours and lost him. That guy was off the market faster than anything I've ever seen."
The tales of newly issued stock turning into millions of dollars for recently hired employees are also reverberating through the industry. Stacy Hayes, managing consultant for the information technologies practice at the McCormick Group, an executive search firm in the Washington area, had four candidates turn down a position because they thought the compensation was too low. The hiring company was offering $100,000 to $110,000 for a position that usually draws $140,000 to $150,000, but was augmenting that with 62,000 shares of stock. The fifth candidate accepted the offer, and four weeks later the company was bought by Lucent Technologies Inc. for nearly $2 billion. "That stock translated into $1.6 million," Hayes says.
In the case of Pseudo's Powers, flexibility may have cinched the deal, but "I wouldn't have come here without equity," he says.
The situation is becoming feverish in certain niche industries. Dinsdale says some of the most outrageous monetary offers are coming from Wall Street firms desperate to take a turn in E-commerce and get their hooks in IT professionals who might otherwise go the dot-com route. "There is some wild stuff on Wall Street," says Dinsdale, who nevertheless decided not to go back to Wall Street, where he spent several years in IT. "Compensation is through the roof."
Pseudo's Lux says "demand for senior people is high right now, so we're always in a competitive situation." That can leave job seekers in a bit of a quandary.
"IT professionals are making choices. They won't get one good offer, they'll get five. They'll have to turn down good offers," says David Garfinkel, VP of human resources at Datek Online, an online brokerage in New York. Nevertheless, Garfinkel refuses to get into a bidding war over prospective job candidates. When new hires come in at higher salaries than tried-and-true existing employees, the inequity is likely to cause problems, he says.
The situation puts hiring managers such as Garfinkel in a bind: They have to strike fast and be prepared to offer big bucks-or at least creative compensation-to draw new hires, yet avoid losing their current IT talent (see story, p. 156).
With so many carrots dangling in front of them, it seems that IT professionals have it made, but job-hopping is still a tricky proposition. Leaving a comfortable job at an established company can be traumatic and risky, experts say. "With the hype, you might think that everyone is jumping and running, but that's not so," Hayes says. A lot of people talk about going to work for a startup, but few really do. With the rewards come big risks.
"I would say 60% of the people balk and stick with a comfort level," Hayes says. Besides giving up the security of an established company, the dot-com lifestyle of long hours and stress isn't right for everyone.
That's why job seekers need to consider carefully what's available and what's at stake. CompUSA Corp. CIO Honorio Padron doesn't mind the idea of hard work, but he's not joining the dot-com parade just yet. Padron says while he's very happy at his current job, "The phone rings off the hook" with job offers-primarily from dot-coms-and one recruiter has made it his personal project to get Padron to make the switch.
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