The colossal growth of the wireless industry, in particular the buildout of personal communications services and digital cellular networks, has created a supply-and-demand problem-too many jobs and not enough people.
“It took a period of 10 years to build out the cellular networks, 11,500 facilities. PCS is trying to build that many in two years,” said Michael Budagher, president of Specialty Teleconstructors Inc., a leading infrastructure builder based in Cedar Crest, N.M. “That already puts a stress and strain on the available resources in the industry. How do you stretch those resources? And cellular is not sitting on their hands; they’re building networks just as quickly as possible,” he said.
Little analysis has been done to predict how many jobs will be created as a result of these massive buildouts, but industry analysts say the numbers are in the several thousands. Christian & Timbers Inc., an executive search firm that specializes in communications and computer/information services, predicts that at least 1,000 new top executive positions will be created, and the company’s recent industry surveys indicate the need may be 20 percent to 30 percent higher than that. According to Budagher, the National Association of Tower Erectors has identified between 300 and 400 qualified infrastructure builders for wireless systems with an average of 12 to 18 people per firm-a small number to complete the task at hand.
Employee search
“I think one thing that everyone needs to understand is that we’ve grown very, very fast as an industry. No one ever thought about supporting it with personnel. What we have now is a highly fragmented and highly inexperienced work force relative to five years ago,” said Ron Bizick, chief operating officer of SBA Inc., one of the country’s largest site acquisition and zoning firms.
This fragmentation has caused wireless companies to look elsewhere for people.
“When new businesses form in any segment of technology, they go toward people with established experience,” said Steve Mader, managing director of the Boston area office for Christian & Timbers of Burlington, Mass. “When a segment blooms, the experience doesn’t exist. That’s what is happening in the PCS area now.”
Companies recruiting executive positions now are more interested in an individual’s track record, and less interested in specific areas, said Mader. Personal achievement within a broader technological background is more important than a functional background, he added.
Building employees
Site acquisition and zoning firms like Boca Raton, Fla.-based SBA, a company with 500 employees, are only as good as their next successful bid. They need to be ready to staff large projects as quickly as possible. SBA’s clients consist of just about everyone in the PCS game, including Sprint Spectrum L.P. and PrimeCo Personal Communications L.P.
“The bottom line is that we’re really as good as our people,” said Bizick. SBA’s internal recruiting department is staffed by employees who have been with the company for several years. The company recruits heavily from the commercial real estate industry, the American Planning Association and local planning associations. And it often seeks out the support of recruiting firms.
“We find the best people through our own network of employees. The size of the company itself will bring people to you,” Bizick said. SBA also advertises in local and trade newspapers and on the Internet and conducts local job fairs in the markets where it plans to do business.
Once the company finds qualified people, it must train them. After three months, a site acquisition or zoning specialist is technically sound and fundamentally skilled, but it takes a year for that person to gain in-depth industry knowledge, said Bizick.
Specialty Teleconstructors recruits employees from equivalent trades, such as the construction and electronics fields, as well as college graduates. For an infrastructure builder, training takes about two years, said Budagher.
“We actually pull people with the same background and give them a minimum of two to three days of intensive training so they can be somewhat productive. At the end of six months, we give them additional training courses and every six months thereafter,” he said.
Budagher saw the employee shortage problem three years ago, and he addressed it by taking Specialty Teleconstructors public and acquiring companies that had trained personnel already in place. The company now employs 150 people.
Stephan Andrade is in the early stages of forming a contract engineering and technicians firm, called Tess Telecommunications Engineering Systems and Services L.L.C., based in Boulder, Colo. Andrade plans to provide PCS licensees and other types of wireless providers with outsourced employees after training them in wireless technology.
“The purpose of forming this was to meet the employment demand of these new license holders and recognizing that they were going to have peaks and valleys in terms of who they needed,” said Andrade. “I’ve hired some people from long-distance carriers. They have good technical understanding, but they don’t have a very big picture of what a wireless network looks like. So we give them a complement of wireless terms and understanding. This will make the operators go to service quicker, as well as make a bigger pool” of employees.
Beginning in September, Andrade’s company also plans to offer training programs to wireless companies in conjunction with the University of Colorado’s Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program. Andrade’s firm will gear the training series toward technicians and engineers. Individuals will typically come from various technical backgrounds such as software companies, regional Bell operating companies and long-distance operators-all have some knowledge of telephony, but not wireless telephony, Andrade said.
Service stations
As PCS providers begin to activate their networks, customer service and marketing will be hard hit areas as well. Sprint Spectrum, which plans to offer PCS service late this year, already is recruiting about 800 customer service representatives for its customer care facility in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. American Portable Telecom expects to hire more than 400 employees, the majority of whom will be customer service representatives, before it opens its National Operations Center in Tampa, Fla., this fall.
“We are not looking for high school graduates,” said Fairie Kizzire, vice president of customer care for Sprint Spectrum. “We are looking for folks with two- to four-year degrees who have extensive customer service experience.”
Sprint Spectrum has conducted job fairs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and has used newspaper ads to attract job applicants. The company constructed a technology model that simulates the environment a potential employee will experience such as using the computer and talking to customers. About 1,800 people have been put through that process, said Kizzire.
Not everyone is turning to other industries for semi-qualified people. Some companies are still waiting.
“I know managers who have been looking for people since last July, and they will not change off of what they are looking for,” said Al Katz, president of Chicago-based First Search, a firm that recruits wireless employees. “A lot of hiring authorities haven’t adjusted to it (the shortage of employees).
Money matters
“We have the potential to be the largest wireless carrier. We’re attracting a lot of talent from cellular telephone companies,” said Ed Mattix, spokesman for Sprint Spectrum.
Retention issues are another problem facing wireless companies. The shortage of employees means higher wages, and enticements from competitors are strong.
Budagher is addressing the retention problem by maintaining his employees’ pay at a competitive rate and offering good health benefits and profit sharing programs. He also tries to organize it so his employee
s can work near their homes.
“It wouldn’t be uncommon to be in California one day and in New York the next,” he said. “It’s also not unusual for personnel to be working 60 to 80 hours a week. The problem with that is that there’s a burnout rate that has to be considered as well.”
Through SBA’s internal training department and with the help of Acquire Telecom, a San Francisco-based consulting and training firm, the company has been able to provide its employees with advanced training.
“I couldn’t tell you what a value this has been for our company, as far as making them able to perform their jobs. We’ve gotten wonderful feedback, and it has boosted morale in general. Other companies might not invest this kind of money [into training]. That’s one of the ways of keeping employees from being pirated,” said Bizick.
Other companies are doing everything from giving retention bonuses to requiring their employees to sign non-compete agreements, said Rick Daly,
chief executive officer of Powell, Ohio-based Humanex Inc., a firm that recruits employees and trains wireless companies on management development.
“On the soft side, they’re doing things like improving the skill level of managers,” said Daly. “We know that lack of retention is bad management*…*Companies don’t spend a lot of time on management skills. If they don’t react, there will be more pirating” of employees.
One of Humanex’s functions is to talk to existing wireless carriers about ways to retain their employees. The issues are different for all companies so the reward system must fit the needs of the people, said Daly.
“The more flexibility you have, the better off you’ll be,” he said. That flexibility may include having quarterly bonuses instead of an annual raise or improving an employee’s working environment, said Daly.
The future
After wireless carriers build out their systems, will the demand for employees still exist? Andrade predicts the need for people will remain because carriers will offer new services continually. The buildout process may cycle back around with the construction of wireless data networks, he said.
Outsourcing, which is already a trend, will probably become more prevalent. The infrastructure will need to be maintained and companies will need people for specific projects, said Daly. A number of small business offices may be picking up across the United States, he added.
“I think within three to five years, this industry will move largely to interim replacements, people that would work on a contract basis,” said Bizick. It costs less to use an independent contractor since companies don’t have to pay to train and lay off an employee, he said.
