JetBlue Adding To IT Staff

Most airlines have laid off workers as they struggle through the economic slump, but 2-year-old JetBlue Airways, which reported $50 million in revenue in fiscal 2001, is planning to add 900 employees to its 2,600-member workforce by the end of this year.

Twelve of the new hires will join the airlines' IT department, VP and CIO Jeff Cohen said Friday during the New York Software Summit. Cohen says his toughest challenge will be finding people who have the right skills. JetBlue relies heavily on Microsoft products, so that means searching for those knowledgeable about Exchange 2000 and .Net technology. "The engineers aren't striving to learn technology like back in the dot-com days," Cohen says. "People have not been as interested in taking their level of knowledge farther."

JetBlue is looking to beef up its IT department because it wants to keep technology development in-house and is reluctant to rely on consultants, even though the company does use them occasionally for product implementation. But Cohen says his goal is to expand the IT department and "get away from consultants as soon as possible." He adds that offshore outsourcing is not an option because he doesn't believe most offshore developers are current on new technology implementations.