Spring Wooing

For the 50,000 engineers who met in Manhattan last week at the annual convention of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 800 expensive exhibits had been carefully set up. But the convention's most popular exhibition--before which engineers daily stood two or three deep--was a makeshift affair; it was a 15-ft. display of hundreds of white cards tacked on a wall beneath the sign "Job Opportunities."

For many engineers the convention was less a chance to study new developments than an opportunity to get new jobs. For their part, engineering firms, hard-pressed by a steadily increasing shortage of engineers (TIME, May 30), used the convention as a rich hunting ground for talent. Page after page of display ad's in Manhattan newspapers and trade journals invited engineers to investigate a wide variety of engineering jobs offering tempting salaries up to $15,000. Though open recruiting was forbidden at the convention, several companies complained that engineers were being "pirated" right at the convention's exhibit booths. But most of the recruiting went on behind the scenes.

Prize Catch. In Manhattan hotels dozens of engineering firms set up plush suites and "hospitality rooms," where liquor and food were plentiful. Radio Corp. of America alone hired nine rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria, kept ten people busy interviewing some 250 engineers. Said RCA Employment Manager John R. Weld: "Convention time recruiting is our largest single effort." Motorola, which last year hired 32 engineers as a result of convention interviews, talked to 234 applicants. Bendix spent $10,000 for its convention recruitment program, which included a six-room hotel suite.

Some firms, recognizing the danger of exposing their men to such temptations, kept them away from the convention altogether. Many sent engineers to the convention for only one day, hoping to keep them from shopping around. This often played right into the hands of the recruiters; the one-day man was obviously a man a company valued--and therefore a good man to steal.

Why Change? Most engineers wanted to change jobs simply to make more money. Though the young engineer just out of college starts at a good salary (currently from $432 to $500 a month), raises are sometimes slow in coming. "Your own company can never understand why you're worth much more two years after being hired," said a 34-year-old electronics engineer on the lookout for a new job, "whereas another company figures that they're getting real experience." Said a Curtiss-Wright engineer: "The general opinion is that if you want more money--change jobs."

The irony of the scramble is that companies must keep hiring not only for expansion but simply to replace engineers who have been wooed elsewhere. While firms were hiring new engineers at the I.R.E. convention, their own men were being hired away by other firms. As a result, hiring and training a new man in an increasingly tight engineers' market generally costs more than a raise for the older man. Many engineers insist that they would be less ready to change jobs if they could be assured of regular raises and increasing responsibilities. Said a young electrical engineer: "What I'd like to see them do is to spend more time interviewing the people who are leaving than worrying about hiring new people."

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