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Boeing's on the move in binge of hiring

By Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter

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For the specific jobs now open, Boeing can't hire fast enough.

Tomorrow, at a hotel near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Boeing Boeing will interview more than 1,000 candidates for permanent positions.

Simultaneously, it is searching internationally for about 500 contract-labor engineers to meet critical short-term needs over the next few years on the new 7E7 program.

It also plans to increase the engineering staff at its Moscow Design Center to as many as 1,000

With two big new airplane programs under way at its Puget Sound area operations — the 7E7 on the commercial side and the 737-based Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft on the defense side — Boeing plans to hire 3,000 people locally by the end of the year, including both permanent and contract-labor positions.

With hiring for hourly production jobs on the 7E7 not expected for a couple years , the main need is for engineering and technical positions.

Boeing job interviews this week The aerospace giant is holding interviews tomorrow at the Hilton Seattle Airport & Conference Center, 17620 International Boulevard, SeaTac. The openings • Boeing has 3,000 positions open locally and 11,000 nationwide. • Beyond filling critical engineering and technical openings, Boeing is looking for some 300 business and finance people familiar with pricing and contracts work. The interviews • 1,100 job candidates already have prescheduled interviews for the event. • Walk-ins are welcome to attend from 1 to 5 p.m. and are advised either to submit an online profile and résumé to Boeing or to bring one on a disk. For more information • Visit boeing.com/employment/careers/ Source: Boeing

The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), which represents Boeing engineers and technical workers, has more than 1,000 people on its priority recall list in the Puget Sound area.

Though Boeing's first recourse is to hire those former employees, company officials said they have exhausted the recall list for the skills required.

"We hit that road first," said Donna Wildrick, senior manager of Boeing Global Staffing. "We've pulled in all of the recalls that were meeting the needs of these openings."

SPEEA contract administrator Rich Plunkett said the union is monitoring Boeing's hiring and believes the process is consistent with the agreed rules.

Several factors are contributing to a talent crunch.

On the defense side, Boeing is going after a limited pool of highly skilled engineering and technical people who are U.S. citizens with the required security clearance to work on defense projects. It is competing against other defense contractors for those specialists.

Structural experts sought

On the commercial side, the initial phase of the 7E7 program has a particular need for engineers who specialize in structural stresses — a limited job pool that tends to go wherever there are new projects.

Where security clearance is not an issue, Boeing is looking overseas for temps.

Hiring on a limited-contract basis helps avoid large spikes and troughs in staff hiring, said Rich Hartnett, Boeing's director of global staffing.

New airplane programs produce peaks in requirements for certain specialties that last only through early design. Rather than hire and lay people off after 18 months or so, it's common to hire some technical staff on a project basis.

SPEEA has no quibble with that. The union contract requires contract labor to be laid off before permanent staff in the same job classification when work slows.

"Historically, we've always had a challenge getting enough stress, structures and loads people," said Hartnett.

"Our actively recruiting foreign candidates is only to supplement a lack of U.S.-based skills," he said, "It's a finite market. We need to go where we can find the engineers."

One agency, Volt, which specializes in technical contract staff, held interviews in Montreal and Toronto last month and will do the same next month in London and Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Boeing is sending hiring managers to assist with those interviews.

Overseas recruiting shows Boeing is trying to poach people from rivals, including Bombardier (with operations in Quebec and Ontario in Canada and near Belfast in Ireland) and even from Airbus (with a major U.K. operation).

Initial design finished

Airbus' new A380 program is a couple of years ahead of the 7E7 and past the initial design phase that requires more engineers.

Is Boeing hoping to entice some A380 stress and structures specialists? "That's a big reason that we're having the recruiting effort going on over in Europe," said Hartnett.

He also said the drive is timed to beat the expected rush of government applications for H-1B work visas for the next year of hiring. About 65,000 visas for new foreign employees will be available in October.

"Part of our aggressive (overseas recruiting) effort now is to get our applications in for that limited amount of work visas," said Hartnett.

Volt is offering pay rates ranging from $40 to $60 per hour along with a benefits package.

"We have been extremely pleased with the results of the (Canada) trip," said Steve Mueller, national account manager for Boeing business with Volt. "We had about 70 interviews in Montreal and Toronto. We expect a significantly higher number than that in Europe, maybe 300 or more interviews."

Any hires made by Volt to fill Boeing needs in the Puget Sound area will be taken out of the 3,000 total for local hires.

"If some of them do get picked up as contract labor, then we would back off on the permanent openings," said Boeing recruiter Wildrick.

Boeing will supplement its engineering needs with more hiring in Russia, where 675 engineering and technical staff are employed at the Moscow Design Center. "It could reach a potential level of 1,000 by the spring of next year," said spokesman Peter Conte.

Though SPEEA's Plunkett is heavily critical of Boeing outsourcing work to Russia, he sees the tight employment situation as good news for his members.

"The way you hire someone away (from rivals) is you pay them more," he said.

Plunkett believes that a strategic shift within Boeing that has led to outsourcing may also be increasing the company's near-term need for engineers.

Boeing has adopted a "large-scale systems integration" philosophy, which means the company will focus mostly on aircraft design and final assembly while suppliers do the detailed component-making.

That strategy is most apparent in the new 7E7 program.

The initial overall design work is being done here, but the suppliers will deliver huge, nearly completed chunks of the jets for final assembly.

"As you move in that direction, the engineering requirement moves forward in time," Plunkett said, "because you are going to have to release drawings sooner than you would have had you been doing the manufacturing in-house. Now you have to send it to a supplier."

An added concern for Boeing is its aging work force, said Plunkett. The average age of SPEEA engineers is 46; 17 percent are 55 or older.

"You can see why they are a little worried," said Plunkett.

Boeing's Hartnett is optimistic that the company will fill its needs.

Despite the perception created by repeated ethics scandals, three years of layoffs and Airbus surpassing Boeing in commercial-jet deliveries, Hartnett said about 300,000 people applied last year for 20,000 Boeing openings.

"We have no trouble attracting people who are interested in Boeing," Hartnett said.

Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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