The e-recruitment operation of the Telecom Valley has shown that employment’s doors were not closed. Except in the microelectronic industry were recruitment plans are frozen.
High tech on the French Riviera keeps on recruiting. The e-recruitment operation of the Telecom Valley, late May, has shown it. Around twenty association member companies gathered together in order to broaden their recruitment area and to perform the first interviews with candidates videoconferencing. PC, screen, audio head set, micro and webcam as equipments.
Around three hundred opened posts
During the fifteen days before the operation, companies had put the description of their posts and of needs on line. A total of around one hundred descriptions with several profile opened posts, which meant some three hundred opened posts for around twenty companies.
Of course most of the offers came from software companies which were present on the research park: ADDX, SII, Ferma, Simulog, Transiciel, Ariane II, Atos Origin, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, etc. Example of Simulog, which offered 16 posts of computer scientists. But among recruiters, you could also find Accenture, which already started recruitment for 2002 (around one hundred recruitments per year), Amadeus which keeps on developing, the INRIA Sophia Antipolis, which came for 4 posts but with around twenty posts currently opened, Supralog with 4 opened posts and a start-up as Castify Networks, which is rising on the niche of streaming video.
Candidates of the Silicon Valley
In front of them, around fifty candidates. Some of them, with a brilliant profile, have even been able to be interviewed seven or eight times by different companies all day long. Some students who were sometimes abroad. Some connections have been done with Romania and, a new phenomenon, four or five candidates were in the Silicon Valley. A terminal with a webcam was in the Institue of French studies at the prestigious campus in Stanford. Those candidates were French people settled in the USA who wanted to come back to France. As instance, another French man settled in Santa Barbara in California has also been interviewed five or six times that day.
The result ? It is too early to say while the debriefing keeps on with Isabelle Attali, the responsible for employment and training at the Telecom Valley. These interviews are just first ones which should be completed by more specified ones. Thus, at Accenture, candidates spend an entire day on the site and they meet every person they will have to work with. Last year, for the first operation of the Telecom Valley, five recruitments had been realized. This can seem a few. But if you think about the cost of a targeted recruitment (50.000 francs and more) for a company and efforts to attract the best ones (presence in job forums, partnership with schools, etc), the e-recruitment of the Telecom Valley is justified.
Microelectronics: recruitment plans frozen
Although high tech on the Riviera keeps on recruiting, it is not the case for every industry. Microelectronics, hyper active all year 2000 long, is particularly hit by the world crisis of semiconductors. And in this industry which had created more than 500 posts last year, recruitments have been frozen. Example for Philips semiconductors whose unit in Sophia works on mobile telephony of the third generation. The recruitment of around one hundred engineers has been stopped, while the expected extension of premises has been blocked. Example as well for Texas Instrument in Villeneuve Loubet. Although extension building works are over, the two hundred recruitments are frozen and new premises will be only partly occupied. Waiting for better days.
Even if layoff process and shutdowns are exceptional (Avant! Sophia, around forty jobs, has relocated its unit from Sophia to Shanghai), the main word in the whole industry is stand-by. Even those, as Conexant, which work on the GPRS and UMTS, some technologies which are still not very developed. Conexant, which should hire around forty engineers before the end of the year, has postponed their commitments. Same position at Cadence, one of the most dynamic representatives of microelectronics on the French Riviera. But this stand-by is quite long. In a very cyclic industry, with usual economic conditions changes, everybody knows that when recovery will take place, they will have to be ready…