InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
May 29, 2000
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IT Recruiting
Dot-Coms Fuel Struggle For Talent In The Northeast
By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee and Larry Greenemeier
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he lifestyle here can't be beat--there's no shortage of things to do," says Tom Wadzinski, a systems engineer at Fact City, an Internet fact-finding technology company in Boston and a recent transplant to the Northeast. "With all the technology companies and startups here, along with schools like MIT, there are tons of opportunities." Wadzinski is a native of La Crosse, Wis., who moved to Boston last September when his fiancée started in a graduate degree program at MIT. It's likely that he'll stay in Boston even after his fiancée completes her studies, he says, because of the opportunities. "The sky's the limit here," he says.The flip side of that for companies looking for IT talent in the Northeast is that competition is fierce. In the New YorkıNew JerseyıConnecticut area, "IT workers are leaving their companies in droves to join dot-coms," says Erik Van Slyke, senior manager in human capital advisory services for the tri-state region for Deloitte & Touche. "They're willing to move to a less well-known company to further their careers."
It's not just dot-coms. The competition for IT talent among financial-services firms in New York City is particularly intense. E.P. Rogers, VP and CIO at financial-services firm Mony Group Inc., says that while the bulk of Mony's IT staff works out of the company's Syracuse, N.Y., home office, Mony must maintain an IT office in New York as well. And while Mony's overall turnover of IT workers is about 8%--lower than many companies for which double-digit turnover has been the trend over the last few years--Rogers admits the tenure of Mony's New York workers is considerably shorter than employees in the upstate office. And Mony has to pay those workers considerably more.
The drive to find IT talent has pushed some companies to dramatic measures. PHT Clinical Networks, a Boston provider of Web-based clinical research systems for the medical and pharmaceutical industries, recently acquired Clinical Data Solutions in Natick, Mass.--in part to hire its eight IT workers. "The Boston job market is incredibly tight," says Jim Becker, PHT's president and chief operating officer. "There's a lot of competition for IT talent from all ends of the spectrum, including technology companies, startups, and nontechnology companies like Fidelity that have heavy IT needs."
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Illustration by Jim Dandy
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