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Duncan Mathison uses his training as a family therapist all the time these days as he heads the search to find new jobs for the 700 Qualcomm employees laid off last month. Not unlike domestic turmoil, the shock of suddenly being cast into the cyclonic frenzy of the high-tech job market can run deep in the psyche of the professionally displaced, and it’s been no different for the newest ex-workers of San Diego’s largest employer in the region's hottest industry: telecommunications.
"Yeah, this is a mix between psychology and business," says Mathison of his job with the La Jolla office of Drake Beam Morin Inc., an international company that makes a living off the ebb and flow of the global economy. "Our business is about working with companies that are going through big changes, like mergers, acquisitions, downsizing and changes in leadership. When that happens, people lose jobs. And it’s always extremely challenging when people lose their jobs."
And by 1990s standards, they did it in record numbers last year. U.S. companies slashed nearly 678,000 jobs in 1998, a 56 percent jump from the previous year and 10 percent higher than in 1993, the decade's previous job-cut record holder. Last year, the electronics industry lost the biggest chunk of workers to job cuts — more than 84,000. For all industries, California-based companies led the job-elimination pack with nearly 92,000 layoffs. All this in a year of record low unemployment.
Mathison's official title at Drake Beam Morin — hired by Qualcomm for its job-searching expertise — is consultant and account executive. But his role is equal parts counselor, philosopher, realist and career adviser. Business for job hunters is as brisk as ever in San Diego, which itself is witnessing a dizzying array of mergers, sell-offs, shutdowns and outright growth spurts within its evolving technology-reliant economy.
With unemployment levels remaining fairly static, the argument goes that all of these shake-ups, in the end, are a good thing. Credit that to the dramatic shift in how business is conducted in the late 1990s.
"The thing that’s really changed about American business today is, you don’t just build this giant factory and make it go 'ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk,'" says Mathison, explaining that the age-old practice of furloughing workers between production cycles has now given way to a more adaptive business model where whole units of short-term workers function until their job is completed.
"Today, you flex your workforce, putting together a manufacturing operation staffed with temporaries, and then you can shut the thing down again if there's no longer a need for the product or the technology changes," he says. As a result, many of these companies have been known to initiate layoffs in one floundering division, while aggressively seeking new hires for other, more promising divisions.
Qualcomm, for example, still lists on its Website five job fairs in the United States and Canada it will attend this month and next, proclaiming, "We currently have employment opportunities in every area of the company and are aggressively hiring the best qualified candidates."
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"A company might be buying another company at the same time they're downsizing," Mathison notes. "Lots of times employees look at this and say, 'How come we’re laying people off but we’re spending money at the same time?' It’s tough to swallow, but it really represents the way companies must respond. You can no longer just get bigger or smaller. You must constantly change."
Joe Raguso, executive director of the San Diego Regional Technology Alliance, agrees with Mathison's summation, describing such restructuring efforts as "growing pains. This whole process is appropriate and in the nature of a growing, high-tech economy." The problem, in part, the former IBM scientist suggests, lies at the feet of certain civic boosters and policy-makers who may be too busy with their "First Great City of the 21st Century" slogans and inadvertently "perpetuating this myth that it’s all going to be good and without bumps."
Thus, in the lightning-quick pace of the Information Age, it can be feast or fast food for high-tech workers, depending on their technical skills and what many in the job-search industry refer to as the "emotional intelligence" they bring to a company. Battling for these Grade A, high-skilled workers has become a cottage industry all by itself. Talk to any human-resources executive, any headhunter, and they are unanimous on one thing: The great issues of the millennial economy will concern how best to go about finding, hiring and retaining the best workers.
While Qualcomm wriggles, rival Nokia — the world's leading mobile-phone supplier — continues to bolster its presence in San Diego, where it has developed its own line of CDMA wireless phones
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Joe Raguso is executive director of the San Diego Regional Technology Alliance. Photo Alan Decker
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Word of a Finnish company’s plans to build a 188,000-square-foot R&D center in the Scripps Northridge Corporate Center along Interstate 15 — to be occupied starting in October — only helped to attract an avalanche of job inquiries and résumés, ex-Qualcomm employees included.
Phil Goodrich, Nokia's local human resources and employment manager. Photo Alan Decker
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"We’re getting a lot more calls," reports Phil Goodrich, Nokia's local human resources and employment manager. "The heightened exposure has actually given us an opportunity to talk to a lot more people who normally wouldn't know that we existed. This sort of puts a stamp on Nokia in San Diego." And ends speculation, he hopes, suggesting that Nokia would eventually pull up stakes and move its workforce to its headquarters for the Americas in Dallas. Adds Goodrich: "People are excited about the fact that the stability issue has been covered."
While much has been written about WirelessKnowledge, the Qualcomm-Microsoft start-up under development here, let us not forget that Bill Gates may be a geek, but he's no dummy. Last month, Gates told Reuters that Microsoft is talking partnership with Nokia for future technology products, particularly pocket-sized PCs. "I consider Nokia a very key partner," the Microsoft kingpin was quoted as saying.
Résumés to the local Nokia offices are coming in at a clip of about 500 to 1,000 a week — either sent the traditional way (with a postage stamp) or electronically via e-mail or through its Website. While some high-tech companies now accept only electronic résumés — publicity-shy WirelessKnowledge is said to be one of them — Nokia refuses to put limitations on an applicant's method of job query.
"It’s definitely more of a challenge to have multiple ways of receiving résumés, but we don’t want to cut off anything," Goodrich explains. While there have been advancements in the electronic scanning of résumés, he says something is lost in the process. "For us, we see it as a more humanistic approach. We’re still focusing on the individual and the individual résumé."
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Each résumé is entered into an applicant-tracking system, and thick books of résumés are prepared for the various Nokia department managers. Updated weekly, the books are reviewed every three weeks, the period of time managers have to make a decision on a prospective hire. From there, an applicant will likely be interviewed by 10 different employees from all types of disciplines.
"If you’re a software engineer, you might interview with hardware or systems test (engineers), then maybe some R&D leaders, and a program manager," Goodrich says. "It gives you a chance to see not only the different components and different aspects of the project, but you also get to know the culture and the values of the company." Hires are decided, in large part, by consensus.
With demand for electrical engineers, computer science experts and software engineers at an all-time high, it’s not surprising the lengths that some companies will go to secure the best and the brightest. Mike Delaney, a no-nonsense technical recruiter for National Engineering Search in Rochester, N.Y., frequently trolls local high-tech companies looking for engineers who are itching for a job change.
With clients like Sony, Delaney says he’ll make direct pitches to potential recruits, cold-calling them at work, at home, "anywhere and everywhere I go. I’m always on the prowl. It was definitely different in the early '90s, when it was more of an employer's market. But in the last few years, it has drastically changed. Definitely an engineer's market today."
He laughs. "Fresh out of school, you’re looking at guys making $46,000 to $51,000 a year. That's with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science," Delaney explains. "You’re seeing all-time-high salaries, $15,000 sign-on bonuses, full relocation packages, stock options. I have a few companies that start off with four weeks vacation now — from the get-go! — and a sabbatical after five years. And it hasn't peaked yet."
Still, the frenzied evolution of the high-tech world has workers all the more uncertain about their futures. Even Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan jumped into the debate last month when he told the American Council on Education, "The rapidity of change has clearly raised the level of anxiety and insecurity in the workforce." This is despite the lowest unemployment rate in nearly three decades.
Drake Beam's Mathison agrees with the fed chief that education is the key. "People must constantly upgrade to the latest technologies, the latest techniques. Nobody can reside on whatever degree they got in college. What we know is that the best people do not get the best jobs. The best job searcher does."
But for a job that often begins with healing the psyche of a displaced worker, the rewards are genuine, Mathison adds. "I’ve never had a job where I’ve had more people say, 'Thanks, couldn’t have done it without you.' But they also say, 'I hope never to darken your door again.'"
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