Re: Finding good applicants

[Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM>]

LaVonna Funkhouser wrote:
>
>  How can we attract resumes
> for persons who will like this environment, will stick
> around for a while, and who are qualified?

One of the coming trends is even *more* telecommuting.  We are within
six months of seeing an explosion in available bandwidth, so that
physical location will be even less of a problem in getting work done.
What does this mean?  Let me trace another variant on this trend.

About 20 years ago, Northern California was in the midst of a real
estate boom the likes of which it had never seen.  This meant that a lot
of people who'd bought ordinarily little tract houses were watching
their property values soar.  By 1979 they could sell their ordinary
little houses for about 8 times what they'd paid for them as little as 5
years earlier. Many took the opportunity to cash in and semi-retired to
places where they *really* wanted to live, such as the coast or the
mountains, and then looked for work there.  In some ways, that led to a
gentrification of the countryside, but these folks discovered that they
could make wine or open B&B's or do something else, and live where they
wanted.  Then in the late 80's the same thing hit Southern California,
and the phenomenon repeated - only this time the migrants usually headed
for the western slope of the Sierra, or to the area around Palm Springs
or to the San Diego area.  A large enough number of them also headed to
the Seattle area, where Emmett Watson (a local columnist) blamed them
for all of the area's growth problems after they took their real estate
proceeds and bought up the desirable property, driving up prices in
western Washington.  (It's still not a good idea to stay very long in
Washington if you drive a car with California plates, although this form
of xenophobia has quieted down somewhat.)

What increased bandwidth is going to do is make this kind of lifestyle
choice more attainable to more people.  And the impact on businesses in
less-than-desirable locations is obvious: if your area doesn't attract
people to live there, they aren't going to want to work there.

So what to do if your company doesn't want to move?  Obvious answer:
adapt to working with the newer technology.  And yes, that's a very
difficult cultural thing to do, particularly if your management truly,
down-deep, believes that effective work can't get done unless there's a
fair amount of face-to-face contact.

Granted, there are lots of good things about working in the same
physical facility.  However, there are also LOTS of good things about
working virtually.  I've done it many times; my company has landed and
executed a number of virtual assignments; a lot of other companies - not
just in Silicon Valley - are finding that they can indeed operate that
way.  For one example, look at Texas Instruments and their relationship
with a programming unit in Bombay, India: according to what I've been
told, they have a 12-hour code development window for the Texas
programmers, followed by a 12-hour code development window for the
Bombay programmers.  These windows cycle five days a week, with the
result that TI feels it is getting twice as much done as usual.  And
yes, there are coordination problems, but mostly of the 'getting the
bugs out' sort.

I'm not suggesting that you try that approach, but I am suggesting that,
since there really *are* qualified folks out there (I keep getting
resumes from them), and they may simply not want to work in Oklahoma,
look at how you might use them virtually.

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems

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