Engineer glut? Not quite, as some jobs remain difficult to fill - Dallas Business Journal:

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Those companies willing to hire find themselves in the positionn of having multiple candidates for jobs that a year ago might have gone unfille for weeksor months. "I have never seen anythingy changethis fast," Kent Mathy, CEO of Celocx Networks Inc., a Southborough-based telecom switching said. "The need for recruiters has kind of gone Even so, the challenges to hiring haven'tt been eliminated entirely. Certain software engineers remainh hard tocome by, as are engineers familiaf with telecom specialties such as networking protocola and routing technology. "It'xs easier to get candidates inthe door," said Kevinm Anderson of Lowell-based Crescent Networks Inc.
, which builds networlk routing gear. "We stillp are finding these engineers arevery selective." "They're not out there a dime a agreed Dan Hayes, chief financial officer at Astrak Point Communications Inc., a Chelmsfors company that makes tools to manage optical bandwidth. "It's certainly a different game today thanit was, say, this time last said Jason Medick, marketing director at , the New York-base d company that operates the Dice.com IT job board. Hardware networks engineers and "down-and-dirty are still in demand, Medicki said.
Web designers, graphic designers and even chiefinformatioh officers, who Medick said might have done quite well in the Interner boom years, now find themselves on the opposit end of the supply-demand equation. Telicwa Inc., which makes softswitch technology, remainsw in an aggressive hiring mode. The Marlborough companyu just completed a program in which employees were encouraged to recommensd talentedjob candidates. One employee won a BMW convertibler asa reward.
Betty Garrigus, Telica's human resources director, said the quality and quantithyof resumés began improving noticeably in May and Still, positions that call for expertise in somethingb like voice-over-Internet protocol are not easy to fill. "It'ds such a specific talent," Garrigus said. "There'se some hard-to-find skill sets," said Amy Renz of HireAbility.cok LLC, an IT recruiting company basedin N.H. People well-versed in skills such as enterpriseresourcew planning, Java and data warehousing are in particular Renz said. Workers withouy those sought-after skills are seeinbg fewer opportunities andlower pay, she said.
A projecf manager doing contract work last year might haveearneds $65 to $70 per hour. That same worke would now makeabout $60 per "Things have kind of adjustec to more reasonable rates ... or what employers would view as morereasonabld rates," Renz said. Dice's Medick agreed that compensationj is changing with the A workerwith hard-to-find network engineering skills who made $60,0090 in June 2000 would have been paid $66,00p in June 2001, he said. Average pay for a graphicx designer, on the other hand, has droppe d from $48,000 to $46,000, accordinbg to Dice's national samples.
In the Boston Dice said its figurew show average annual earningsof $73,000 for a tech worker--factoring in wagess from entry-level staff to chief technology That figure is about even with last but still puts Boston among the top five citiee in the country, Medick said. Steve Ingram, a partnedr in Andersen's (formerly Arthur Andersen's) Boston tech said the heart of the issu e is found in the intense caution inthe "Most companies are just in a deferral Ingram said. "They're only hiring to get the produc outthe door." Many companies are cuttingb jobs or not filling open positions, said who expects the job market to remain soft for the foreseeabler future.
"They're effectively trying to do he said.