Wooing Workers Local High-Tech Companies Compete With Industry Giants Nationwide For Limited Supply Of Skilled Workers

Jeff Dillon didn’t need to hear the hard sell from Packet Engines.

He knew what the spiel would be.

It was the lure of 12 ski resorts within a five-hour drive, 12 national parks in a day’s drive, little traffic and cheap living.

That was exactly what he wanted to hear.

For six years, Dillon worked as an electrical engineer designing modems for U.S. Robotics in Grass Valley, Calif. Before that, he did similar work for four years in Denver.

Most of what he wanted was in northern California. A good job, a quiet lifestyle. His wife, Gena, had family nearby.

To Packet Engines, he was a known commodity.

“Jeff was a great asset to the team,” said Dave Roth, director of application specific integrated circuits at Packet Engines.

Demand for computer talents like Dillon in today’s market is startling, and companies must scratch for them like never before.

Packet Engines, a high-tech start-up in the Spokane Valley, has been able to do it. Others such as Telect, Schweitzer Engineering Labs in Pullman, and Advanced Input Devices in Coeur d’Alene are discovering just how difficult the hunt can be.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates 110 percent growth in computer engineering and computer science jobs through 2006. Traditional engineering disciplines, such as mechanical and civil, are in the 15 to 20 percent growth range.

At the same time, bachelor’s degrees awarded nationally in engineering plunged from nearly 80,000 in 1986 to about 65,000 annually the last four years.

Established professionals such as Dillon have reaped the rewards.

For him, the only thing missing in Grass Valley, a 10,000-population gold rush tourist town near Sacramento, was the tantalizing opportunity to work for a start-up company - and earning stock options that might turn into gold.

In Silicon Valley, start-ups are everywhere, but success is wildly hit-or-miss. And stories of chaotic congestion, crime, and the huge cost of living turned him off.

The high-tech industry’s fertile crescent just didn’t sound worth the hassle.

But when Dillon heard about a job through the brother of renowned Packet Engines’ founder Bernard Daines, he listened.

At age 33, Dillon made the move to Spokane as a project manager last June.

He said he is pleased with his decision. He found a comfortable three-bedroom apartment for $695 a month within a three-minute drive of his office. He laughs that his sister pays $1,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in Chicago, and that he’d probably pay at least $1,800 a month for a place in the Bay Area like the one he currently has.

He also appreciates the good public school system awaiting his sons, Tommy, 17 months, and Kevin, just six weeks.

“Spokane reminds me a lot of the Midwest, where I grew up,” said Dillon, a Columbus, Ohio, native who attended Purdue University. “It’s quiet, friendly, safe and clean.”

Those qualities are exactly what Packet Engines and other local high-tech firms pitch at talented engineers.

It worked with Dillon, but it’s not always that easy.

High-tech workers take a big risk when they move to an area without an established culture of start-ups. Job hopping in the Bay Area or Boston is a convenient and smart way to spread your bets.

Then there are complaints about Spokane’s lack of top-notch restaurants, night life and the other attractions of major metro areas.

“It’s remote,” said Tom Hammond, a 40-year-old circuit designer who left a job in Boston for Packet Engines in January 1997. “A lot of people back East don’t want to take the risk, because if Packet goes, they go.”

So Packet Engines recruiters must convince engineers the company, with 150 employees already, can maintain its leadership in the exotic world of standardized gigabit ethernet networking.

The company’s products transmit data at speeds 10 times those previously possible. To comprehend that speed, assume the 27 volumes of Encyclopedia Brittanica would take 30 hours to download on a typical 28.8 kilobits modem. The same job could be done in 3.6 seconds on Packet Engines’ trademark ethernet switch.

That’s 30,000 times faster.

If that capability doesn’t complete the sell, there’s the fact the company is headed by Daines, who co-founded a $4 million company in 1992 that sold in 1995 for $350 million.

But even with realistic potential to fulfill those retire-at-40 kind of dreams, it took Packet Engines more than a year to assemble the team of engineers officials wanted, and there’s still room for more software engineers.

The search for engineering talent with at least five years of experience in the industry never stops.

The expertise and experience required eliminates college recruiting and training programs, even for the best and brightest recent graduates. They need people now, not in the six or nine months it takes even a bright newbie to get up to speed.

So instead of college campuses, Packet Engines has combed places like Ireland, England and India.

Pay is competitive, but not exorbitant by industry standards. Stock options are the real lure.

To recruit, Packet has listed openings on its Web site, advertised in trade magazines, attended job fairs around the country and spread word of mouth at trade shows.

And to reach the biggest audience, they’ve also taken half-page and quarter-page color ads in the Sunday Boston Globe and San Jose Mercury News, hometown papers in high-tech hotbeds.

The cost? $25,000 for a two-day ad in Boston.

The competition? On one Sunday last November, the Globe’s technology jobs section had 123 pages, with 21 pages of ads no smaller than a quarter page.

The result? Just a handful of qualified applicants responding per ad.

Still, Daines says, “We’ve had exceptionally good luck recruiting people.”

At Schweitzer Engineering Labs, a manufacturer of microprocessor protective relays in Pullman, a plan to add 55 engineering jobs has human resources director Bob Stolte scrambling.

He has 60 days to pull off a recruitment feat he figures should more realistically be pursued over three to four months.

He’s asked for referrals from the engineers Schweitzer already has on board. He’s advertising in trade publications, posted openings on the Internet, and used ads in newspapers, such as last weekend’s $5,000 pop in the Kansas City Star specifically targeting systems-integration engineers.

The ads show the bucolic rolling hills of the Palouse, along a country road lined with overhead power lines.

“There’s so much competition, we’ll use what lines we can,” Stolte said. “It’s a good time to be studying engineering.”

That’s an understatement.

Cooky Flenniken, a recruiting coordinator at Washington State University, said this is by far the best job market for computer science and engineering graduates in the past decade.

May graduates are almost completely placed, she said, with many getting previously incomprehensible perks like $5,000 signing bonuses, relocation packages and stock options, not to mention $40,000-plus starting salaries.

Some companies are even going after math and physics majors who can be taught needed job skills.

“All of our better students were snapped up as early as last semester,” said Dennis Horn, dean of engineering at Gonzaga University. “I have not heard a single story of someone desperately seeking a job that can’t find one. By this time of year, I usually do.”

The amazing part is that college students comprise the low end of talent in the high-tech industry’s insatiable demand.

The pitch about Spokane’s slow pace of life, good recreation and good schools appeals to some engineers, but hardly all.

Telect, a worldwide company with 870 employees in Liberty Lake, can attest to that. The company designs, engineers, manufactures and markets analog, digital, fiber-optic and control products for the communications, broadcast and corrections industries. The company has been around since 1982 - the technology industry’s Precambrian Era. Now, growth is more steady than exponential.

“It’s a tough sell,” said Colleen Connors, director of human resources for Telect. “We’re not getting a lot of applicants.”

She said the company tried without success to use contract headhunters. When professional recruiters do find someone, the fee is a whopping 30 percent of the incoming hires’ salary, she said.

Telect has shifted its strategy to offering internships for college students who want a full-time spot after graduation. The company promoted 65 people from within last year, which can draw promising students for the long term, especially those with family in the area, Connors said.

“Maybe now we’re willing to give up a little in experience, because you sometimes just won’t find that perfect person that has everything you need,” she said.

Spokane-native Daines said others with family roots in the area are a potential resource. Exiled from the Inland Northwest by their ambitions, these “expatriates” could be drawn home by new opportunities, he said.

Donal Casey doesn’t quite understand the geographical hurdle. He said he had grown tired of the frantic pace in Dublin, the Irish capital city of more than a million people.

The electrical engineer for 3Com, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based computer networking firm, was searching for a new job on the Internet. What he learned about Packet Engines and Spokane suggested a new position might provide a respite from his hectic surroundings.

Since he came to work for Packet Engines in December, Casey said he’s found he loves the mountains and recreation, if not the food additives used in American cuisine.

Casey said he loves the sedate pace, friendly people, and safe streets. He’s 28 and married, with a 16-month-old daughter.

But like many engineers, Casey doesn’t plan to buy a house here.

“I’d certainly like to stay here a few years, but it’s a volatile industry,” Casey said. “It’s hard to know if I’d stay.”