Sitting in the shadow of the Geneva Steel Co. in Lindon, Utah, Center 7 Inc. is a far cry from the IT gold mines of the Silicon Valley or the million-dollar movers and shakers of New York's Silicon Alley. Despite its remoteness from the major hubs of IT activity, the application service provider has found an IT resource even more precious than a venture capitalist with bottomless pockets: talent.

Center 7 CEO Kelly Phillips estimates that at one point, his company was receiving a resumé every 15 minutes for the 200 positions he plans to fill eventually. Last month, Center 7's Lindon head count was 70 and growing at about 10% a week, according to Phillips. Recruiting has gone so well, Phillips says, that in some cases he's been able to hire IT recruits with two master's degrees and as much as five years of experience for less than $100,000 per year. Employees at Center 7 average six years of IT experience.

Phillips was picked to head Center 7, which provides hosting for E-business applications, systems management, and storage area networks, by Ray Noorda, founder and former CEO of Novell, and a primary backer of Center 7. Phillips, who was a director at Franklin Covey in Salt Lake City at the time, says he asked Noorda whether locating in Utah was a good idea. "I asked him, shouldn't we go to Silicon Valley?" says Phillips. "I had some skepticism, but it was his money."

The secret to Center 7's staffing success has something to do with the plentiful skiing and access to extreme mountain biking in the Utah environs. But it has more to do with word of mouth. Every member of Center 7's staff has been hired as the result of a reference from another employee, or from Phillips himself. "Someone bet their job on you if you work here," Phillips says. Most workers come from Utah, Arizona, and Texas, and Phillips hasn't had to extend his search beyond those states.

Stream International Inc., a $236 million provider of Internet and voice-based customer support services, has 17 facilities around the world, including facilities in or near the largest cities in the United States, such as Boston, Dallas, Memphis, Tenn., and Portland, Ore. But the company is looking beyond these hotbeds of technology to find IT talent in more remote areas. In April, Stream International opened a 60,000-square-foot facility in Kalispell, Mont. It plans to staff the Kalispell facility with as many as 650 IT professionals by year's end. What's the attraction? The region's existing high-bandwidth infrastructure and an available workforce. Local Flathead Junior College, which boasts a Cisco Academy, is expected to provide a steady source of new talent for Stream International as well as provide additional training for current employees.

The Kalispell site will function as a third-party technical-support operation for Stream International's Internet service provider and original equipment manufacturer clients. Continued development in training workers will lead to expansion of the off-site services offered, eventually including customer-support services for router, hub, and networking technology, according to Reed Garrett, Stream International's VP of service delivery for North America.

Before Stream International committed to renovating an abandoned mall in the center of town into a state-of-the-art services site, the company hosted an open house last November at a local hotel to gauge community interest. Garrett's reconnaissance mission yielded more than 700 interviews from qualified candidates. Says Garrett, "We're even receiving resumés from IT workers who had moved out of the area for jobs and now want to move back."

Illustration by Jim Dandy