Rats off the sinking ship
The managing director of local enterprise-focused telco Powertel told your writer last week that while it had been tough finding good staff for the past 12 months, the market had recently started to ease.
"We're finding now, particularly some Telstra and some Optus people out there in the market," Paul Broad said.
"It's a lot easier at the moment -- we've got a couple of Telstra people here at the moment which is just terriffic for us," he added.
"We're getting approaches now from some really good people. We employed a really top class network planner the other day. And this guy, he is top drawer."
According to the executive, there is uncertainty among the ranks of employees at large telcos about their companies' future.
"You say you're going to start downsizing, you lose your good people first. And that's what will happen to Telstra," Broad said.
Rats are also apparently jumping off the sinking ship AAPT, as its staff wonder who will buy the troubled subsidiary of Telecom NZ.
"There are some people coming out of AAPT, but we haven't employed any," said Broad.
The magnitude of Telstra's cuts alone should be enough to get other telcos and corporates interested.
The giant is rumoured to be on the verge of cutting its networking staff from 2200 to 1600 in the near future.
While this situation is obviously a fantastic opportunity for employers, it's important to keep in mind just how jaded some of these future employees may be.
No doubt some of them have also been through the dot-com bust half a decade ago and are now a little "commitment-phobic". You'll want to make sure they don't jump ship to a competitor the first time your company receives some negative press.
Some advice from one of the ICT industry's forefathers might come in handy here.
"Don't assume you're done [after you've hired someone]," Guy Kawasaki wrote on his blog on January 30 this year.
Former Apple Fellow Kawasaki helped bring the original Macintosh to the masses back in 1984 and has a degree in psychology as well as an MBA.
"Frankly, you should recruit every employee every day because when they go home at night, you might never see them again if you don't keep the lovin' going," advised Kawasaki in a lengthy entry on the subtle art of recruiting.
Powertel's Broad agrees it's important to focus on keeping staff happy.
"Since I've been here [at Powertel] we've been far more careful... we work much harder on our induction programs to make sure the people we get in, we keep," he said.
If you don't follow that philosophy, you might find you have staff with wandering feet.
"We got a few people pinched from us twelve months ago, which was a bit annoying," the managing director admitted.
Are you a network engineer fleeing Telstra or another company? What are you looking for in your next job? Send your thoughts to renai.lemay@zdnet.com.au.