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By Mark Leibovich
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 3, 1998; Page WB18

Shawn Smith is a wizard when it comes to building – deep breath – object-oriented C++ code that deploys STL and design patterns in Solaris/IRIX environments.

This would confuse – and bore – most people. But Smith's credentials were very seductive at a high-tech job fair in Linthicum Heights last week. As he navigated the DoubleTree Guest Suites at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, he looked every bit the Big Geek on Campus.

Recruiters from worker-starved tech firms – which is to say, many local technology companies – clustered near the 29-year-old engineer, hoping to lure him to their private interview suites with candy, monogrammed clothing and stress-buster balls shaped like brains ("Because we're looking for brains," said one recruiter).

And they enticed him with "laid-back corporate culture," "outside-the-box corporate philosophy," "competitive benefits" and, of course, money.

He is a star on a lopsided local playing field of supply and demand. Like professional athletes in the era of free agency, would-be technology hires like Smith can be increasingly bold in what they ask for. The companies have become increasingly accommodating.

One supplicant ushered Smith to the back of a suite and offered him a job on the spot. It paid in the $60,000-a-year range, but Smith expected more, plus a signing bonus and relocation costs.

Another suitor, from a company called Compuware Corp., asked Smith how long he would be willing to commute to work. No more than 20 minutes, he said. Smith could afford to be choosy because plenty of good companies are based near his Severn home.

After two hours last Monday, Smith, who currently works as a software engineer at Lockheed Martin Corp., had been courted by 15 local technology firms. When he got home, his answering machine light was flashing with another offer from the McLean consulting giant Booz-Allen & Hamilton Inc. In the next three days, he received four calls a day from firms he had spoken to Monday.

By early Thursday, Smith had four offers in hand, all of which paid in the high $60,000-a-year range, and he expected several more. "I really hate to sound arrogant," he said, "but I'm hoping to get between $72,000 and $75,000 a year."

Far from arrogant, Smith is a soft-spoken engineer who seems genuinely embarrassed by the attention and acutely uncomfortable asking for money. But with demand for skilled tech labor outpacing supply, he finds himself in the heady epicenter of a job market weighted dramatically to people with his skills.

Shawn Smith is the walking gold standard of the Washington area's burgeoning high-tech economy: young, mobile, experienced and deft in the specialized skills that lucrative information technology projects require – like creating "custom software documentation IAW MILSTD 2176/498."

Neera Jassal, center, talks with SRA recruiter Art Prach at the high-tech job fair at a hotel at BWI Airport. (By Larry Morris – The Washington Post)

Recruitment Battles

Recruiters for TASC Inc. in Chantilly are offering $250 to anyone invited to interview there. Eight hundred people in the Washington area have inquired about the offer in the last week, said Tony Borghi, TASC's director of staffing.

Perhaps the hippest brand name of any area technology shop, America Online Inc. of Dulles is a coveted work address for technical and creative professionals alike. But the company still has 250 unfilled jobs, said Mark Stavish, the online service's senior vice president for human resources. One prospective employee even asked AOL to throw in a country club membership. (Stavish did not say whether this was granted).

AOL has given up to $5,000 to employees who refer others to the company, said Stavish. (The average AOL referral payout is closer to $1,000, he said.) The company employs 9,500 people today – 2,800 in Northern Virginia – compared with 750 nationwide just four years ago. It has 12 full-time recruiters on staff, compared with just one contractor four years ago, Stavish said.

Microstrategy Inc., the Vienna software firm, flies prime recruits to Washington for guided helicopter tours of the city. They are led on a weekend blitz of the capital's restaurants and clubs. Their formal job offers arrive as part of a large gift basket. When Best Software Inc., a Reston-based maker of business software, extended an offer to a prospective job candidate recently, he insisted the company move his race car from New Jersey to Florida as part of his deal. Best obliged, and the man is now a valued employee, said chief executive Tim Davenport.

Fierce competition for recruits is hardly unique to Washington's technology sector. It is an entrenched corporate sport in California's Silicon Valley, born of the high concentration of engineers and companies in a relatively small area.

Early last year, for instance, when Apple Computer Inc. announced massive layoffs, recruiters from a nearby software company plastered "We're hiring" fliers on cars in the Apple parking lots within a few hours of the announcement. The next day, another company hired a small plane to fly the same message over Apple's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. Some employees said they received a dozen calls from rival recruiters on that day alone.

Here, as the region strives for critical mass as a technology center, this "techies market" is best revealed in stark numbers: Industry groups estimate that 25,000 technology jobs are going unfilled here, a shortfall economists say costs the area about $1 billion in lost salaries a year.

The number of local technology firms continues to grow; Northern Virginia alone has 1,591 companies, compared with 1,292 just two years ago, according to a George Mason University study. But the region's supply can't keep up with demand: The ranks of graduates with technical degrees in Maryland and Virginia are dwindling.

From these objective realities, full-scale recruitment battles have sprung. They are characterized by a new array of corporate behaviors and employee expectations, displayed in numerous arenas. Technology job fairs, for instance, have become a standard part of the local hotel scenery. In fact, a two-day event at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Tysons Corner begins today.

Enticing Employees

Problem was, says chief executive Rob McGovern, "the guy could have worked for any company on the [Dulles] Toll Road." And moreover, McGovern said, Evans wanted to live in West Virginia, in a house powered by solar energy, eating food grown on his land, "living the life of an ultra-ecologist."

No problem. CareerBuilder agreed to help convert Evans's barn into a state-of-the-art telecommunications center, complete with high-speed Internet access that allows him to lead a team of engineers back in Reston from West Virginia. The company flies him to Reston for regular staff meetings. In sum, McGovern said, CareerBuilder spends $2,000 and $3,000 a month to support Evans's lifestyle.

"It's the best investment I've made since I started the company," McGovern said.

Such incentives prove CareerBuilder will cater to its employees, McGovern said. For as much as they are recruitment sweeteners, these enticements are also retention tools – no small thing in an industry where turnover rates run up to 25 percent annually.

CareerBuilder has pioneered a number of recruitment techniques. It has established an employee royalty plan in which technical workers receive a portion of sales of the products they work on – the same principle as an author receiving royalties on his books.

Like many young Internet firms, it also is quick to trumpet its hipness factor, noting that the company dress code takes casual to new heights (or depths). "Our engineers wear shorts every day, even in winter," McGovern boasts.

It's no surprise that CareerBuilder is at the forefront of innovative technology recruiting. It is a gateway to what is perhaps the fastest-growing recruitment medium, the Internet. One thousand companies post job openings on the CareerBuilder network. CareerBuilder, which employs 120 people of its own, fills about 80 percent of its vacancies on the Internet.

"Recruitment has become a much more strategic imperative," McGovern said. Companies are seeking a more sophisticated way to target prospective workers, he said, and the Internet can streamline job hunters and prospective employers into an interactive forum.

At the Job Fair

"I'll just stop people in the hallway, say, 'Hi, how are you?' and tell people about our company," said Steve Thompson, a full-time recruiter for SRA International Inc., at last week's BWI fair.

SRA, a Fairfax information technology contractor, employs 1,500 people and is looking to fill another 100 jobs. Thompson, 25, has no technical background himself – his degree from George Mason University is in communications – and he is not authorized to make job offers. Rather, he serves as a meeter, greeter and screener, a first line of defense for the company's hiring-level recruiters. SRA pays $3,000 to Professional Exchange, a Virginia Beach job fair promoter, for two days at the DoubleTree, Thompson said. (Prices vary, said fair organizer Gary Baird.) "If you make one hire, the job fair pays for itself," said Alan Cohen, a recruiting consultant in the suite next door who represents GTE Corp.'s Columbia-based Electronic Services Division. "If you make three to five hires, it's gangbusters."

While on-the-spot job offers are still the exception, they are becoming more common. Generally, if recruiters meet someone they like, they will follow up by phone within 24 hours. Cohen stresses the importance of acting fast. "If you let grass grow under your feet, they're planting daisies on you," he said.

When a good prospect struts through a job fair, bidding wars can begin in earnest. Cohen is still radiant over a "four-star candidate" he landed at a fair earlier this summer. Sought by several companies, the 30-year-old prospect commanded $85,000. Elite candidates are hard to find at job fairs, recruiting veterans say. "You figure if they were really so great, why would they need a job fair?" one said.

But that didn't stop recruiters from lavishing praise, attention – and company key chains – on anyone bearing a re»sume» last week.

William Bradley, 27, an Air Force systems administrator based at Fort Meade, will be available for hire when his stint ends in exactly 173 days. He needs an employer. By the looks of things, employers need him more.

As recruiters crowded around him, Bradley's expression mingled giddiness and embarrassment. Growing up in a lower-middle-class section of Philadelphia, he never expected to be in such demand. He graduated from the police academy in 1992, but couldn't find a job except as a security guard.

Two years later, he joined the Air Force. One day, while working on a computer, he mistakenly destroyed most of the data on it. His supervisor handed him a computer manual and ordered him to learn everything in three weeks. Today, Bradley is proficient in a variety of computing platforms and, according to his résumé, is "recognized by supervisors, customers and coworkers as a fast-learning, self-motivated team player with a proactive approach to problem-solving."

He cruised the DoubleTree hallway, visiting with Raytheon Co., T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., Nichols Research and many others. He stopped periodically in the hall to trade re»sume»s for business cards. He reiterated to one recruiter that he's happy to travel anywhere, and he told another that he's comfortable in "both UNIX and NT environments."

At the RHI Consulting suite, under a poster promising "Immediate Opportunities, $60,000 to $150,000," Bradley stopped to take stock.

"This feels good," he said. "And kind of weird."