Silicon Valley Rebound Pressures Tech Hiring
The pickup in tech hiring is spreading beyond Silicon Valley, forcing companies outside the big tech center to rethink their recruiting tactics.
Companies in second-tier tech locations such as Austin, Texas, and Raleigh, N.C., had an easier time recruiting talented employees during the slump. But now that Silicon Valley firms have started aggressively hiring, and the general economy is improving, competition is stiffening.
“We’ve always had a bit of a competition for talent with Silicon Valley,” says Julie Huls, president of the Austin Technology Council, a trade group of Austin-area technology executives. “As firms over there start to recover, we have to make sure we stay in the game.”
Convio Inc., a 370-employee Austin-based maker of fundraising software, continued adding employees during the recession, hiring about 35 people last year. “We were able to recruit incredible people that we couldn’t have gotten before the recession,” says Angie McDermott, vice president of human resources.
