Small World Gets Smaller - job fairs help recruit foreign high tech employees - Brief Article

As the demand for skilled high-tech workers increases--and said workers become more and more scarce--recruiters are willing to take unusual steps to ensure that they'll be able to fill their open positions, including hiring workers from overseas. This trend toward foreign recruitment became evident last year, when the U.S. government exhausted its supply of H-1B visas by March, leaving high-tech employers to battle over the dwindling domestic supply.

But even with Congress having approved more visas--a move that incoming President George W. Bush has signaled he'll maintain--where do employers look for qualified candidates?

Global Tech Expos has found a way to make the process easier by instituting a series of High Tech Recruitment Expos in San Jose. The expos began in January and are set to continue throughout the year. The expos center on using the latest technology--in this case, video-conferencing--to put American employers in touch with candidates in London, Toronto, Vancouver, Bombay, and Tel Aviv, as well as Boston and New York City.

The video-conferencing system used by Global Tech Expos was created by the Florida-based company Talk Visual, which field-tested it for Whitehall-Robins Healthcare in September 2000. After a successful first run for the technology, several companies, including IBM, Philips Semiconductors, and Nextel have expressed an interest in using it to alleviate their recruitment pains. "We believe that video-conferencing will significantly enhance the job-recruitment industry," said Talk Visual CEO Gene Rosov, "and we are hopeful that our plans with Global Tech will herald a new era in visual communications."

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