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Karen Brown
MSOs forging ahead into new telecommunications frontiers are finding the financial reward of expanding into new markets is offset by the challenge of finding and training technical employees needed to ramrod the drive.
Although finding skilled employees may be mostly happy trails for MSOs concentrating on expanding into the Internet via cable modem services, the road isn't so easy for those broadening their offerings to digital telephony and high-speed data transmission, long considered telco territory.
At Bresnan Communications, which operates in seven major market areas spreading across Minnesota and Michigan, adding telephony services has been a staffing challenge, according to Lenny Higgins, SVP-telephone and data service.
"We're not only going after the residential market, but also the business market as well," he said.
That has meant hiring sales people who know how to sell telephony products and finding network service administrators to maintain increasingly complicated hardware and software. The latter has been particularly challenging because the Internet is a hot job market right now, and those skilled in it can pick and choose where they want to work. In markets with other major telephony players - such as Rochester, Minn., where there is an IBM plant and the Mayo Clinic, with its large telephone and conferencing network - the scramble for employees is especially fierce.
"We're competing against all these other people with IP (Internet Protocol) slots open and that is a very competitive market," Higgins said.
Although he declined to give specifics, Higgins said Bresnan somewhat underestimated the salary range demands for network administrators. But at the same time Bresnan can take advantage of the market in luring employees away from more staid jobs to work on the latest cutting-edge data and communications technology related to the Internet.
"I think people recognize the opportunity of the future in this technology so sometimes we don't have to overbid," Higgins said. "We do have to pay a higher dollar than we had originally thought, but at the same time this is sexy stuff and people are sometimes willing to sacrifice a little on the salary side."
Bresnan does use headhunter search firms to locate skilled systems managers and other technical employees, and often they look to local telcos. Because these people already have the experience in telephone systems, they can often be better candidates, said Higgins, who himself came from a telephone industry background.
"Definitely there is more of a need today to pull in more people from the telephone industry," he said. "It is very hard to train people internally."
Higgins said so far the MSO has been able to keep up staffing to meet service demands, but Bresnan is also looking to higher education to help find, create and train high-tech employees of the future.
The MSO is working on an agreement with as-yet-unidentified colleges to create a training partnership. Not only would Bresnan use these colleges to send existing employees for further technical training, but it would also work with educators to create curricula to produce future employees with the skills needed to support this burgeoning industry.
Things are easier on the cable modem side, where Bresnan uses in-house installers to get the cable into customers' homes and then contracting with a computer retailer to hook up the cable to the subscriber's computer. In the future, the MSO will probably shift to having a single installer skilled in both traditional cable hookup and computer systems.
While the company did beef up its staff and arranged contractors for the cable modem installations, Bresnan does have to schedule installation appointments farther out than traditional cable hookups - two weeks, compared to two or three days. But Higgins said the lure of being able to sign up for improved Internet access often means customers are willing to wait.
Similarly, as Cox Communications Inc. expands into telephony and high-speed data business, recruiters are finding they must expand their search for qualified employees - inside and outside of the company.
One place the company does this is on its Web site, according to Judy Henke, VP-human relations for Cox. The site is one of the most popular targets for visitors - recent estimates put it between 4,000 to 5,000 hits per week - and the company has expanded the site to allow job seekers to post their resumes electronically.
The company's strategy also includes making its existing employees ambassadors for Cox in the drive to find new talent. Cox unveiled on June 1 a program that rewards employees with a bonus for helping to recruit outside the company. Henke said the bonus amount will vary among Cox subsidiaries and will depend on the value and market for the job.
Although the company is competing with telcos for the same pool of skilled employees, Cox can offer a smaller, more innovative work place than the Baby Bells.
"There aren't 50 forms from corporate to fill out before you can do something," she said. "From a psychological standpoint we know that is important, because employees don't like bureaucracy."
Henke acknowledged that pursuing employees with skills in demand is going to inherently cost more in salary, but she added that might be a temporary thing when it came to telephony skills.
"This may be the crunch time as everyone rushes to create their platforms, but once they get up and running that may not be so," she said.
As with her Bresnan counterpart, Henke also emphasized high pay doesn't have to mean overpaid. Telcos still can't offer much in video systems, she points out, and cable's ability to combine that with telephony and high-speed data means Cox can offer potential employees a resume-building advantage.
"Right now there are only a handful of people that know video and know telephony and know data, and that is a very valuable commodity," Henke said. "I can offer that to you if you come to work for us."
Not all of the search is outside Cox. In fact, programs to train cable employees and move them into telephony jobs have created a backfill problem on the cable side, Henke said.
In-house training at Cox comprises 3% of the company's payroll expenses, and approximately 30% of that is for data and telephony tutorials, she said. The company has also created an online university with 101 courses offered to employees, and plans are to expand the program.
Finding and keeping skilled employees in the evolving telecommunications field is the number-one operational challenge for Cox right now, Henke said.
"This is an ongoing and future problem, but it's one we have to be good at," she said.
MediaOne Group, meanwhile, is benefiting from its heritage as a U S West affiliate. Now separated from the telco giant, MediaOne nevertheless stocked up on employees with telephony experience and is in a good position to offer digital telephone services, according to Greg Braden, VP-digital telephone services.
The company also keeps a list of what Braden calls "the usual suspects" - a file of potential employees in each market area with good telephony skills to target for recruitment to MediaOne. On that score, Braden said MediaOne has been successful in attracting telephony employees because of its cutting-edge goals.
"We're on the leading edge of a brave new world here," he said. The broadband possibilities in high-speed data, telephone and video "is attractive to folks because they are not just staying with the plain old telephone companies."
He did acknowledge such efforts do have their price - literally. Competitive offers are vital, but Braden also emphasized the promise of expansion, interesting work and advancement was just as important.
"It's not purely a compensation issue," he said. "It's an issue of future and growth."
While MediaOne does seek people with certain skills outside the company, a majority of the employees in the new divisions of telephony and high-speed data transfer came from MediaOne cable operations, he said. They took advantage of the company's in-house career path programs and training.
For other MSOs concentrating more on Internet service development, the trail leading to technical staff is clearer, despite the fact high-speed cable modem technology does require more computer skills and help desk support. In Denver, for example, TCI is finding no shortage of willing employees to back its recently unveiled high-speed cable product, according to Linda Betz, employee relations manager in staffing. Betz handles the hiring for customer service, technical support and cable installers.
When the company began planning for 's introduction to the Denver market, it didn't have to look far to find staff. Betz said the interest - both from existing TCI employees to new applicants - "is scary. I keep thinking I will wake up one morning and it will be different."
"Right now in our operation we have 350 people in the area serves in customer service and technical support," she said. "We're finding that yes, these people are coming to us and they are excited about the Internet; yes, they are young and they know about computers. But we also get people who are interested in the Internet but they don't know as much about computers."
For installers, the basic four-week training session plus a minimum six months of on-the-job installation experience are the requirements. From there, TCI has a three-week training program to give them the computer software knowledge to become installers.
Pay is a good lure for making the jump from regular cable to high-speed cable modem installer. The starting rate for basic installers is $10 an hour, while an installer earns about $13.50.
Betz also foresees the evolution of the "super installer," a technician with the training to hook up cable, high-speed cable modem Internet access and the telephony products TCI is planning.
Granted, there is competition for good employees between TCI and local cable and technical companies in Denver. But TCI has undergone several salary restructuring processes in the past few years aimed at cutting attrition, Betz said. Although the company is offering pay that is good but not the highest in the market, it is the perks - from free cable service to a healthy 401(k) plan - that attracts applicants, Betz said.
"There are a lot of good things to bring people here above the 20 cents an hour more they get elsewhere," she said.
A steady stream of applicants and a supply of TCI employees ready to move into the more technical high-speed data fields means the company has not had to aggressively lure away employees from area telephone and technical companies, Betz added.
In TCI's California markets, where the company is planning to roll out its first cable telephony services in Fremont, there has been no shortage of applicants either, according to regional spokesman Andrew Johnson.
TCI is just beginning the engineering and hiring for digital cable telephone service and the word about the expansion has brought more computer systems manager and technical applications to the MSO. Johnson said the bigger problem has to do with software companies raiding TCI for employees that have completed its in-house telecommunications training courses.
With both TCI and Pacific Bell on aggressive hiring campaigns now, the job climate in California may change in a year, but for now, problems with finding technical help is "not a blip on our radar screen as yet."
Smaller MSOs concentrating on cable modem service expansions are also not struggling to find staff. For Massillon Cable, which serves 45,000 cable customers in an area including Akron, Canton and part of Cleveland, the search for qualified technicians to back cable modem service has been two part, according to VP Bob Gessner. Massillon began offering cable modem service three months ago and has about 400 customers, along with 8,000 customers with traditional dial-up Internet access.
Massillon didn't have any problem finding computer technicians for the cable modem service, Gessner said. Help desk employees were drawn from a fairly rich area employment market, partially thanks to an abundance of college graduates with computer skills and the presence of cable giant Time Warner and its Road Runner Internet cable modem service.
As for installers, Massillon started out by taking one traditional cable installer who had an aptitude for computers and trained him for cable modems hookups. To meet the demand, the company also contracted out for installation services in the area - again benefiting from living in the shadow of Time Warner - "because area contractors were geared up for cable modem installation.
"Fortunately, we find contractors are already beginning training for that," Gessner said.
Gessner said an ample supply of new college graduates is supplying his company with ample employees for Massillon's Internet help desk. Also, younger employees still going to school often work the desk part-time, an arrangement Gessner says is a perfect fit of the person to the job.
Competing with Time Warner for employees has also not been a problem for the family-run business, Gessner added. Massillon's has a good track record for keeping people onboard with its innovative benefits, including profit sharing and a program to help pay to send employees' dependents to college. The company offers students a yearly amount equivalent to 80% of the tuition and housing fees to attend Ohio State University or any other university they chose to attend.
None of this is new because the company has been doing this since the 1970s, Gessner said.
But using a combination of in-houseemployees and contractors is not always easy, he added.
"The struggle about whether contracting is more expensive than in-house personnel is one we deal with every day," Gessner said. Contractors tend to complete more assignments, but they charge a fee higher than the salary for a Massillon installer and aren't available for other company duties. But on the flip side, the contractors supply their own equipment, insurance and benefits.
Gessner said the company will stay with its combination of an in-house cable modem installer and contractors and see how the system evolves.
"At this point it is kind of a test for us," he said.
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