We hear about the tight labor market all the time, and if your company is hiring anyone beyond entry-level positions, you’ve experienced it first hand. But if you’re in the market for high-tech workers, it gives new meaning to the word. The American Electronics Association reports unemployment rates for engineers is a mere 1.6%, for computer programmers a negligible 1.4%, and for math and computer science workers an infinitesimal 1.2%! And get this: the number of high-tech college grads dropped 5% from 1990 to 1996, yet demand for such people is projected by the Labor Department to rise 118% by 2006. That means emerging companies and technology enterprises will feel the pressure tenfold, because they’re growing faster than the averages.

What should you do? If you need to hire technology workers, this is exactly the kind of market when you should use a qualified search firm or agency to do the work. Candidates you find any other way, e.g., newspaper ads, are likely to be the bottom of the barrel, and you will have to do the sorting and qualifying, looking for that elusive "needle in the haystack." Then, should you find a really good candidate, they will need to be sold on your company without giving them the deed to the ranch as an inducement. That’s exactly what search firms are best qualified to do. These skills are much more necessary in tight labor markets than in easy ones. You are the buyer in a seller’s market.

So, in a really tight labor market, go to the experts for help. They are well worth the price.