Tim Smith, principal manager for AMS's learning and professional development group, notes that AMS piloted the Programming Fundamentals program in 1996 to train non-technical college graduates, and the response from AMS managers and the educational community has been strongly positive. "People are really excited about the program," he says. "In some cases, our project managers are requesting these people versus information systems majors." Smith also notes that colleges are very enthusiastic about the program.

Those accepted for AMS's Programming Fundamentals course must successfully complete a four-week immersion program in Job Control Language (JCL), as well as the high-level programming language COBOL, before joining the AMS workforce. However, AMS has developed a "strong front-end assimilation" component to the program designed to help students make the transition from the liberal arts to high technology. "If you're a history major going into computer programming, that can be a little scary," says Smith. He has also developed a back-end component that includes business-specific training where students learn how to apply their new technology skills.

Smith points out that the Programming Fundamentals course is an in-house program, and that AMS only trains recent grads who were hired specifically for the program. Those with degrees in music, science, or languages stand the best chance of being accepted into the program, he observed. Thanks to the company's policy of hiring and training promising non-technical graduates, AMS has found, "a lot of extremely intelligent, extremely motivated graduates who were not in IT," Smith says.

Similarly, Pete Spewak, vice president of enabling technologies for the Reston, Va.-based consulting firm DynCorp Inc. notes that his company will train college grads with almost any degree as long as they can demonstrate a strong technical aptitude. He now has technical workers on the company's Year 2000 (Y2K) staff with backgrounds from a variety of liberal arts disciplines, including French, music, library sciences, history, the arts, and political science.

Spewak adds that DynCorp also provides such workers with training in other "hot programming languages" to ensure that they will be employable when the Y2K crisis is over. Like many companies, DynCorp offers full tuition reimbursement for evening and weekend technical course work. "This spring, we will be hitting the campuses very hard," looking for graduates with all kinds of backgrounds for DynCorp's "software factories," Spewak says.

Due to the extreme shortage of technical workers, "we have to look outside the box," when it comes to recruiting for technical positions, according to HTC's president Dyan Brasington. "We've found that music majors make good [IT employment] prospects," she adds. Brasington believes that students from all disciplines, including the liberal arts, should pursue the tremendous career opportunities available in the high-tech field. "Many companies will look for [liberal arts majors] with an interest in high technology" to fulfill their staffing requirements, says Brasington.

One such company is the Bethesda, Md.-based Data Management Services Inc., where corporate vice president Lisa Downey voices a common complaint. "We can't find people with the skills we need. We have constant job openings." This prompted her company to open the Downey University, an in-house training program designed to groom promising candidates for technical jobs. "We look for people with aptitude," Downey says. "They must be willing and able to apply themselves," she adds.

Downey University draws its students from the in-house technical staff, as well as from recent college grads with technical or business degrees. When evaluating recent technical grads, Downey looks for skills such as Oracle 8, Microsoft operating systems, SQL, as well as object-oriented languages, such as C++. Because Data Management Services Inc. is heavily into database development, candidates with database skills get the red carpet treatment. "We're amazed if we can find someone with multidimensional database skills," Downey says. "Usually, they have relational database skills."

Business candidates for Downey's training must have retail or management experience in areas such as merchandising, promotion, or product line management. If they're straight from college, they should hold degrees in disciplines such as marketing, business, or statistics, though Downey will also consider liberal arts majors. "They need to understand how the technology is applied," she says. Like many other companies, Data Management Services must train many of its own technology workers. "You can't look for the skills you need, you have to look for potential," notes Downey.