Technology.

• Position: Industry Outlook - Interview - Company overview

Facing the ongoing challenge of securing a qualified workforce, technology companies are using unique methods to attract and retain top talent. At our annual technology roundtable, industry officials commented on the success and impact of state initiatives, while stressing the importance of an ongoing commitment to training and education in the state.

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Other issues discussed include pumping up the state's image as a place to grow a business and a career and the blurring lines between work and play. We'd like to give a special thank you to Richard Nelson, president & CEO of the Utah Technology Council, for moderating the discussion and Holland & Hart for hosting the event.

This is the second year that quality of workforce is the number one issue for our industry and state. What are your companies' top talent needs in terms of engineers, developers, other technical people or management talent?

CUPAL: Engineers for us.

J. NELSON: We are looking for management talent that also has a scientific background, which is a unique need. It's people that have graduated with a scientific degree and have some experience managing, as well.

KHANWILKAR: Medical device manufacturing, for me. Quality assurance.

HANKS: Product marketing.

GUILLORY: Engineers that have two-to-four years of experience so they are knowledgeable and come in and hit the ground running as opposed to having to be mentored.

What is your company doing to retrain underprepared talent?

SUNDERLAGE: We have a lot of workers coming in well educated and we will train them to the unique skills that we require.

HILL: We don't need to do very much retraining. I'm very satisfied with the colleges turning out engineering talent here. They jump in, they get it. We are pretty selective and we promise them they will use every skill they learned in college at our place. But when we get into the blue collar workforce, we do have to spend a little more time doing retraining. So those are the folks that have no college, usually no technical school education.

SLOVIK: We do a lot of retraining. Every week, one of our senior technical people does something called "lunch and learn" where they teach on some topic, whether it's a nasty bug that they found and how to avoid it or some algorithm that they came up with. Every quarter we do one-to-two days off site, where we do intense training and have tests and all kinds of competitions. The topics vary from very technical, things that they probably should have learned in school and didn't, to other things that are not technical, such as how to give presentations and how to be a good manager or good team leader.

What is your top method for attracting or retaining talent?

GOODRICH: We took a little different approach recently. Instead of going through the typical head hunters for high level positions, we contacted industry specific consultants that had national breadth and expertise and had them zero in on firms elsewhere where there were layoffs because private equity firms came in and there was a big downsizing going on with a major competitor. It was easy to bring people into Utah this time, which has been a challenge for us over the years. So this was a new thing, to take advantage of disruption elsewhere in the country through consultants.

HALL: One of the things that we looked at last year was when Fortune came out with its Great Place To Work type companies. Not having the pockets quite as deep as Google, we developed our own "great place to work" initiatives that looked at retaining and attracting talent from a holistic point of view. We tried to identify those facets outside of just compensation, which is certainly a big piece of it, to make sure that as our employees come into the organization and have an experience with us, that it is something that they enjoy. Whether it's movie Fridays or whether it's an opportunity for them to be more engaged with their clients at perhaps a different level, we found that by doing the simple things outside of just compensation, it has paid dividends in terms of being able to retain and attract folks we are after.

COLBERT: There's a unique individual that gravitates towards a startup; it's a "work hard, play hard" mentality. So what we have done to attract and retain individuals is we have a 12-inch powder rule. If there are 12 inches of documented snow at any of the resorts, don't play sick, just go ski. And what happens is individuals still work a full day. They hit the slopes and they are usually back in office by 1:00 p.m. That is an effective tool both in and out of state with individuals who want to come and enjoy the mountains.

GOODRICH: Did you say you have openings?

SLOVIK: Superstar employees at the beginning of their career want to grow. They want to learn. When I interview, I ask them, "If you could take a job for half salary working one-on-one with Steve Jobs would you do it?" And of course they say, "Yes. I would learn so much." I tell them, "That's what you need to be thinking at this point in your career. Find those people. It's not Steve Jobs, but there are a lot of other people you can learn from." And that's why we invest so much in training, because I believe the superstars will take less money if they think they are learning and growing and if they think they are being mentored.

HANKS: We do a three-pronged approach. First of all, all of our employees have stock options, all the way to our receptionist. The second thing is that our guys like to play foosball and go paint balling and all kinds of wild things that normally I wouldn't participate in. The last thing we do to retain people is we give everybody important jobs; we assign projects to our engineers that maybe are beyond what they are capable of doing. It's a little bit of a risk but it makes them feel like a million bucks. And if they fail, we let them do the next one and hopefully it is nothing too visible to the outside world.

PROPER: I think there are two basic elements. One is strategy, and we all have our own individual strategies here. And two, it's execution. They don't teach execution in schools. We have one of the best organizations here in Utah that teaches execution that's being adopted in the schools, and you are seeing a grassroots approach. I'm talking about Franklin Covey. Right now, they have Seven Habits for Highly Effective Teens being adopted throughout organizations for high schools and others.

I was back on campus last week at Harvard. They are talking about teaching basic principles around what we would call wildly important goals, lead measures, lag measures. How do you know if you are executing? How do you know what the goals are? How do you know if you have achieved them? These are basic things that individuals need to know coming out of school just along with typing. Things like, why are we here, what are we doing? What are our goals? How do you align them? How do you report them? Those things are not complicated to teach; one semester and you can have a course on it. But we are reteaching those things and if we were to formally add it as curriculum in one way or another at the higher education level, I believe there would be a material difference with the organizations that spin out of Utah. Because we can execute. And we can then start keeping businesses here because we are executing and not just getting gobbled up by another organization that executes better.

Utah has developed a strong record of working effectively through tough industry issues with state initiatives such as the Utah Fund of Funds and USTAR. Given these successes, what one recommendation do you have for the governor and his new global competitiveness team to effectively increase and improve the state's quality workforce?

J. NELSON: First, I think the governor is doing a great job already. But I think the idea of creating an employment gradient is an important concept we will need in the future. I think a lot of people see Utah as a fun place to recreate. High-tech sports are really big and the state has done a lot to promote that idea, but I'd love to see us become more of a location that people see as a place to come and work, to come to Utah as a destination for employment, not just recreation.

REES ANDERSON: One of the biggest concerns I had at a recent meeting was that 25 percent of Utah high school kids are dropping out. Because of that meeting, I started doing research to figure out what was going on. And one of the things I came across was that in states where high schools teach entrepreneurship, they have over 80...