Web Hosting Industry May Soon Face Staffing Crisis

A couple of months ago, Rackspace said it added 105 new employee during Q2, 2006 - and planned to hire 200 more before year end. More recently, BlueHost CEO Matt Heaton wrote on his blog that his team grew by 30 during the past 4 months - and he's looking to add 30 more people in the next 4 months. But is there more where the new hires came from?

"We have plenty of jobs!" ThePlanet-EV1Servers' Doug Erwin said during a recent live chat session with his customers. "Send your resume to us: jobs@theplanet.com". Of course, if there were any web hosting resellers in the audience, I'll bet they're looking to expand their staff as well.

Recruitment is one challenge, retention is another. The Economist says America's 500 largest companies will lose half of their senior managers in the next 5 years. AFCOM's Data Center Institute says the talent pool of corporate data center professionals will shrink by 45% between now and 2015. Most web hosting companies are fortunate to have relatively young employees. On the other hand, while your people aren't getting ready for retirement, they can look forward to being ruthlessly headhunted.

Already, this IT Pro survey shows that 48% of the 1000 IT workers it interviewed are sending out resumes or talking to recruiters. According to Wired Magazine, even Microsoft isn't immune. The company has tripled employee stock options and rolled out concierge services such as grocery delivery. When a 20-something engineer got a job offer from Google, Microsoft reportedly offered him $250,000 to stay. He said no thanks.

 

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