Filling tech openings event's focus

More training, better recruiting, telecomuting among ideas

Andrew Fano, account director for Teradata (left) talks with Fayetteville High School student Kyle Jiang at NWA Tech Council’s second Tech Summit at the John Q. Hammons Center.
Andrew Fano, account director for Teradata (left) talks with Fayetteville High School student Kyle Jiang at NWA Tech Council’s second Tech Summit at the John Q. Hammons Center.

ROGERS -- Business leaders must change outside perceptions of Arkansas and train homegrown employees to increase the area's technology workforce, Mike Malone, president and CEO of the Northwest Arkansas Council, said Tuesday.

Malone spoke at the second annual NWA Technology Summit at the John Q. Hammons Center attended by more than 800 people.

The event was hosted by the NWA Tech Council, a group formed last year by the Bentonville/Bella Vista Chamber of Commerce. The event had 400 participants last year.

"Northwest Arkansas is the new Arkansas," Malone said during one of the day-long event's 25 breakout sessions. "People may be coming here reluctantly, but they are staying."

Malone and Jeff Amerine, CEO of Fayetteville-based Startup Junkie Consulting, discussed ways to grow, attract and retain talented people in Northwest Arkansas. Startup Junkie offers free assistance, events, networking and work space to help entrepreneurs.

Amerine said it's important for technically talented people to have places where they can have "creative collisions," or time to talk with and learn from one another. He said those places can range from co-working spaces to neighborhood coffee shops or brew pubs. The more people with a tech background who come to the area, the more opportunities for those peer-to-peer interactions, he said.

Summit attendee Sanjeev Singh, founder and CEO of Tech Atlantis Inc. in Fayetteville, said the challenge of finding workers is not unique to Northwest Arkansas. Tech Atlantis is a tax, finance, education, supply chain and human resource service provider.

"There are certain talents you might not be able to find in one area, so you have to keep innovating and finding new ways to do things," he said.

Joey Nelson, founder and CEO of BLKBOXLabs, said the jobs can often be filled outside the area, and workers can telecommute. The company is a full-service creative agency.

"You don't have to have an office," he said. Younger workers often like the freedom and flexibility of setting their own hours and working remotely, he said.

The fact that many jobs allow workers to be located anywhere adds another challenge to attracting young talent, Malone said. Northwest Arkansas is doing a good job attracting millennials, he said. The region ranked 10th nationally in the percentage of employees aged 22-34 years, according to data firm Economic Modeling Specialists International, a CareerBuilder company. Employers added 2,526 millennials to payrolls between 2007 and 2014, taking employment to 69,212, or 30 percent of total workforce.

Malone said it's also important to educate the existing workforce to fill job openings.

"We need a training pipeline," he said, adding that several area school districts are experimenting with programs geared toward filling some of those positions.

Malone provided a snapshot of the training gap, saying one job website showed 1,102 technology-related jobs listed, but the area's three secondary education programs -- University of Arkansas, Northwest Arkansas Community College and Northwest Technical Institute -- only had 210 graduates last year specifically trained for those jobs. Those job openings included positions such as programmer, database administrator and Web developer.

Part of the problem is the focus on getting a bachelor's degree or higher when only 22 percent of the area's jobs require a four-year degree, Malone said.

Business on 11/11/2015

Upcoming Events