Fast Talk: Now Hiring

Ted Hoff

Vice president of learning IBM
Armonk, New York

Projected 2004 employee growth: + 11,000

IBM will make 15,000 hires around the world this year. We absolutely expect that there will be net new employment both in the United States and across the globe. At the end of 2003, we had 319,000 employees and we expect at the end of this year we'll have about 330,000 jobs--and that's with attrition.

Fundamentally, our global employment matches our global business. Since 1979, IBM has had more employees working outside the United States than in it. When we look at how we bring in IBMers from around the world, we want to know what is the best work being done and where. At one time, for example, companies went to Ireland primarily because of the wage differential. But you know what? God bless Ireland, it's now successful. Its labor rates have gone up. The point is, a lot of these labor cost-differentials are fleeting.

In determining which skills IBM people need for tomorrow, we examine where we think value for our clients is shifting. For example, we have dramatically embraced Linux. So we have a whole set of skills that we are building around open standards. We also see the world moving from the client-server system in IT to a more robust, dynamic networked system that includes grid computing, pervasive computing, wireless computing, and autonomic computing. We certainly need people with advanced skills in those areas.

We're making a major effort to ensure that we can develop people who can live in the world of IT and provide business insight for clients. It's a hard combination to find. We have this huge annual investment of at least $750 million in development to keep up with a rapidly changing world.

John Krakowski

Corporate human resources director
Northrop Grumman Corp.
Los Angeles, California

Projected 2004 employee growth: + 6,000

The nature of defense contracts is that they have long R&D phases before getting into manufacturing and production. So that requires people to work on a long-term basis. For example, we were recently awarded a $4.5 billion contract having to do with missile defense, and that will require something like 1,100 people over the course of three to four years. We have a good backlog of contracts and that will continue to drive the growth and the need for people with the kinds of talents--everything from R&D to manufacturing to production--that we're looking for.

We post all of our jobs on our company Web site. On an average monthly basis, we get about half a million hits from people looking for jobs and another 80,000 hits from people internally looking for developmental opportunities. We think we're going to hire about 18,000 people this year. That's total. Some of that is just maintaining the current headcount, but absolutely, there's net jobs growth in that. We have two sectors where we'll really have a lot of jobs open through the end of the year: information technology and our mission systems sector. That's just a function of the defense business.

We're very fortunate. We've gotten what we believe is more than our share of the defense business. I think that bodes well for what the company is doing these days, and it's that growth that drives the need for new people. Part of that need is in the professional, high-tech arena. If we can get our hands on good systems engineers, software engineers, people like that, we're always glad to get them.

Doug Ducey

President and CEO
Cold Stone Creamery
Scottsdale, Arizona

Projected 2004 employee growth: + 11,725

I think ice cream is recession-proof. I used to sell beer for Anheuser-Busch, and we had a saying: "When the economy is good, the beer business is good; when the economy is bad, the beer business is better." I think some of those same ideas apply to Cold Stone in tough times. It's a comfort food. It's something that's affordable, and it's something that gets back to family and simplicity.

Our franchisees opened up 228 new stores last year. And they'll open 469 more this year. Every time a store opens, in addition to a franchisee being in business for themselves, there's somewhere between 15 and 35 crew members they need to hire. When we originally set our vision in August of 1999, we said we will have 1,000 profitable stores operating by December 31, 2004. At the time, we had 74 stores up and running. We set out that big hairy audacious goal of 1,000 profitable stores, and amazingly, as of December 31 of this year, we will meet it.

We believe the principles of really getting the right people on this team--not only at headquarters but also inside the stores--got us to that goal. For example, we don't interview our crew members; we audition them. It takes a certain level of energy, enthusiasm, and outgoing personality to create this ultimate ice-cream experience. We bring in five, six, seven people at a time and audition them for jobs. And you quickly learn which ones do or do not have the personality, charisma, and can-do attitude to work in a Cold Stone.