iTECH: Talent Search

This story appears in the March/April print edition of iTECH, a supplement to Transport Topics.

Tech talent is in high demand at the technology companies that serve the freight transportation industry, representatives from several companies said.

“It’s the applicant’s market, not the hiring company’s market,” said Sheila Storch, vice president of human resources at McLeod Software, in Birmingham, Alabama. “McLeod and other technology companies are struggling with the fact that the STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] fields have a dramatic shortage of available talent currently.”

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Storch pointed to the rapid pace of change with technology and the fact that governmental regulations increasingly require the use of new technology. “Those factors, plus the number of people exiting the workforce, make this a time when there are many more job openings than there are applicants to fill those positions,” she said.

Competition for software programmers and developers comes not only from inside the transportation technology industry, but also from major corporations outside the industry that rely on the abilities of skilled technical personnel.  For TMW Systems, a good example of this is Hyland Software, because both companies are based in Cleveland.

“Hyland is not in the transportation and logistics space, but we definitely compete with them for a lot of the same technical talent,” said Laura Leili, TMW’s director of human resources and facilities. “We also compete with other top employers, such as Google and Progressive Insurance.”

In areas that have high concentrations of tech companies, such as Silicon Valley and Seattle, the fight for the available talent is fiercer. “One of our biggest challenges is being located in Seattle,” said Mike McQuade, chief technology officer at Zonar Systems. “Something like 7 percent of the technology workers in Seattle work at Amazon. Thirty thousand technology people are descending on Seattle Facebook jobs. There’s Microsoft, Expedia, Tableau Software and a bunch of other technology companies. It’s really a shootout for talent.”

Peloton Technology is a startup based in Menlo Park, California, that works on automated-vehicle technology. In addition to competing for talent with companies within the transportation-equipment manufacturing sector, such as Bendix, Meritor Wabco, TRW and the major truck manufacturers, Peloton must deal locally with Google, said Dave Lyons, product vice president. “Here in the Silicon Valley, our main competition is Google’s team that is working on self-driving passenger car technology.”

The challenge of finding skilled workers is not limited to the United States, according to R. Fenton-May, president of Atlanta-based CarrierWeb. “We’re a global company with units in England, Ireland, the Czech Republic, the U.S., Brazil and China,” he said. “We’re constantly looking for the right people with the right qualifications in each of those locations.”

CarrierWeb frequently encounters competition from technology companies outside the transportation sector, Fenton-May said. “In Ireland, we lost two people to Google, who offered salaries well above the market average.”

In their efforts to acquire skilled workers, companies are using a variety of methods to locate candidates, such as conducting searches on LinkedIn, employing outside recruiters and offering internships to college students. “At Peloton, we work our personal networks very hard to find talent,” Lyons said. “We’ve also hired recruiters. These are single individuals, not firms.”

Internal networking also is a valuable means for finding the right people at Rand McNally, in Skokie, Illinois. “Our employees are often our best resources for talent acquisition,” said Yusuf Ozturk, chief technology officer.”

In addition to LinkedIn, some companies are connecting online with available talent in other ways. “As a part of our sourcing strategy, we use niche job boards and chat communities that are specialized around technical topics that interest developers,” said Meribeth Gilbert, corporate recruiter at McLeod. “These online spaces typically have a white board where we can post openings and get responses throughout the day.”

Although Zonar is using outside firms to find talent, the company is taking steps to increase internal recruiting. “We’re creating a chief talent officer position within the company,” McQuade said.

TMW doesn’t use outside firms for staffing and instead has its own “talent acquisition group,” Leili said. “I think that’s where a lot of companies fall short. There are so many great technical tools out there right now that can turn your own talent acquisition department into a high-performing executive search group, and not enough people take advantage of that.”

One of the strategies used by TMW and others is to identify talented individuals at other companies. “We generally look for passive job candidates,” Leili said. “We reach out and target people who are not necessarily looking for a new position, because that’s where you get your best and your brightest.”

TMW, McLeod, Rand McNally, CarrierWeb and Zonar recruit from universities and offer internships to students. “We go to the college campuses for job fairs and set up our booth,” McQuade said. “When we tell students that we’re building the connected truck, it catches their interest. We show how Zonar uses data to improve such things as fuel economy. To technology people, that’s something that’s tangible.”

Once a promising candidate is found, the focus shifts to enticing the prospect to come onboard. “The competition for people has driven up compensation in terms of salary, stock options and perks,” McQuade said. “When you walk into an office here in downtown Seattle, you might find an espresso stand with a live barista. The work spaces are wide open. There are fewer cubicles and more rooms. There may be some foosball tables, video game consoles and big chairs. The refrigerators are always stocked.”

For a startup company, one way to attract talent is the promise of stock options that could become highly valuable, if the business plan succeeds. Peloton has 11 full-time employees and intends to employ about 30. “All employees at Peloton today have stock-option equity incentives,” Lyons said.

A common theme with technology companies is the importance of taking time for activities away from the office. “The work-life balance is something we emphasize,” McQuade said. “One way Zonar stands out is that we don’t demand that people work 60-hour weeks. We let them work a more normal 40-ish week, so that they can have a normal life outside of work. That’s been a big appeal.”

Flexible hours have become a key way that companies help employees navigate the competing demands of their lives. “The current labor shortage for technical personnel has prompted the industry to offer flexible work arrangements that appeal to candidates at various stages in their professional and personal lives,” Gilbert said. In many cases, this means more generous policies for family-leave time.

“McLeod’s work environment is casual and autonomous, allowing for some degree of personal freedom within individual work schedules,” Storch said. “We have a flexibly structured work environment that is family-oriented and that respects individual work-life balances. McLeod is also a very fast-growing technology company, and that is very appealing to many people.”

CarrierWeb offers a “very open, diverse environment,” Fenton-May said, with “the kind of benefits that are popular today with technical personnel. For example, we allow a fair amount of working from home. Obviously, one needs to be very careful on managing people and insist that some face time is necessary, because people get lost if they work only at home.”

An enjoyable work environment also is essential, Leili said. “You want to make sure that you’re creating a culture that’s engaging. You want your office to be a place where people want to come every day to work, a place that they recommend to their friends and their family. Thirty percent of TMW’s placements are through employee referrals, and we’re very proud of that statistic.”

Zonar also strives to bring fun into the work space. “We do all kinds of special things, such as Food Fridays or having a Ben and Jerry’s truck show up during the summertime,” McQuade said. “It all goes back to creating that whole experience. You spend a lot of time at work, and we want people to enjoy it. Companies have to be creative, if they are seeking to push the envelope with their products. You can’t just stuff your personnel in a cube and expect great things to come out. That’s not how it works.”