Employees Go Back To The Future

have done little to alleviate the longstanding shortage of information technology professionals.

"The allure of the dot coms is going away," says Karl Pennington, senior executive recruiter at The Gatekeepers International, an Atlanta-based company that recruits business and technical professionals for traditional consultancies, as well as the newer e-business solution providers. "You are going to have to have a [heck] of a pedigree to pull [employees] from old-line companies," he says. That's a dramatic departure from last year, when those companies suffered a mass employee exodus. Drawn by the opportunity to cash in on an IPO, talented business and technical professionals took flight to dot-com consultancies and other high-tech services start-ups.

There is no question that traditional consultancies, such as Andersen Consulting, Deloitte & Touche and Price-WaterhouseCoopers, have regained the hiring advantage, says Joshua Randall, an analyst at Kennedy Information Research Group, Fitzwilliam, N.H. "Employees will be looking for work at companies that will be profitable in the long run," he says.

In business since 1992, e-business solution provider TIS Worldwide counts Fortune 500 companies among its clients. It has a solid compensation plan and offers employees stock options, which help in the competition for talent. "But in the insane period, we had job candidates who opted not to work at TIS, going with the big stock options [at dot-com consultancies] instead," says president Bob Gold.

All that has changed, Gold says. "We have the advantage right now," he says. "As companies spend more cautiously, the buy-side is getting more and more sophisticated. Instead of saying, 'Do you have 10 guys who could start tomorrow?' clients ask, 'What makes you think you are going to hit this deliverable?' They say, 'Show me your workflow, your methodology, your back office. What is your vision going forward? Are you are going to survive?'"

Revenge Of the Old School

That cautious sales cycle benefits companies, such as TIS, with client bases that lean more toward the Fortune 500, Kennedy Information's Randall says.

Some industry watchers term what's going on as the revenge of the old-school companies on Web players. Earlier this year, Andersen Consulting launched what it calls an "e-units" program. The company contacted former employees who had worked at Andersen for at least three years, letting them know they were eligible for some 1,000 special "loyalty e-units" if they returned to their former employer. E-units, designed to compete with the stock options offered by dot coms, represent stakes in the company's venture-capital investment unit. Last month, Andersen reported that at least 108 ex-employees had returned.

Deloitte Consulting also made a move in September to lure back talent. The company ran a full-page employment ad in The Wall Street Journal, noting the declining stock valuations at pure-play Internet consulting companies. An insider at a dot-com consultancy, who asked not to be named, reports that McKinsey & Co. and Bain Consulting are launching similar programs. "It's their way of getting even," he says.

How To Cope

All this adds up to one thing: Dot-com consultancies have to work harder to get good people and to hang on to those they have. They're rethinking their recruiting strategies and employing creative approaches.

To counter the lack of skilled personnel, I-Group Hotbank, a Boston-based incubator, launched a program it calls "Executives In Residence." In addition to hiring permanent employees for the dot-com start-ups it funds and nurtures, it makes skilled executives available to them on an as-needed basis, offering help in, for example, formulating marketing programs or developing customer-service strategies. "The goal is to mentor the teams of new companies with experienced executives, who wouldn't otherwise be available," managing director Ellen Roy says.

Another approach is to tap into the Internet as a source of job candidates. "That's not just a matter of going to job sites such as Monster.com, where active candidates post their resumes," says Bill Craib, senior director of training at Advanced Internet Recruitment Strategies, Hanover, N.H. "But [it means] learning techniques to unearth passive candidates who haven't posted resumes online," he says, such as employees listed on corporate Web sites. The company runs seminars and sells software to help companies accomplish this task.

But long-term change demands a dramatic rethinking of how companies recruit, says Kevin Wheeler, president of Global Learning Resources, Fremont, Calif., which develops strategic consulting and training programs to help companies acquire and keep good people.

Wheeler says the talent shortage,especially for technical professionals,is much more vast and critical than most companies realize. He notes the economy has shifted from an industrial to an information-based economy, and the talent pool hasn't kept pace.

Many Silicon Valley companies offer employees who have left an open invitation to return. "They say, 'Just let us know when you want to come back. No interview, no hassles, you're hired,'" Wheeler says.

Another way to cope is for companies to start wooing job candidates the same way they woo customers. And to lure employees, Wheeler says, you need to create a brand or a recruiting image.

"Most people can picture what it would be like to work at IBM or Arthur Andersen, but the vast majority of companies remain faceless," Wheeler says. Putting a face on the company, he explains, is a matter of taking advantage of some of the traditional advertising channels, including billboards and TV. Smart companies accomplish that by moving marketing executives, who have a deep knowledge of how to build brands, into the human-resources arena. "You are marketing to employees,it's just like marketing to customers," Wheeler says.

Recruiting Panache

Strategic research and marketing techniques not only add panache to your recruiting effort,they're also effective. Here are some strategies experts recommend: