有IT技术不愁找不到工作

On Jan. 18 in Columbia, Mo., student developer Tony Brown holds an AppleiPhone 4 with the NearBuy app he helped develop with three other University of Missouri students as part of a contest in 2008. The app earned them a trip to Apple headquarters, along with job offers from Google and other technology titans.

RENEE MONTAGNE, host: Surveying the nation's job market is a bit like looking at a map on your computer screen: It's not until you zoom in that you can see the details. And when you do zoom in, you can find some very different stories.

NPR's Zoe Chace went looking for people who are hiring and may have found the best job market in the country.

ZOE CHACE: It's opposite day, where undergrads have their pick of jobs and companies are desperate to hire. Take Microsoft, Ederlyn Lacson was an intern there last summer.

Ms. EDERLYN LACSON (Senior大四学生, University of Maryland美国马里兰大学): Last year, they had a private screening of Cirque du Soleil(太阳马戏团）for the interns.

(Soundbite of laughter)

CHACE: Lacson is graduating this year from the University of Maryland's Computer Science Program. She had her pick of jobs in the tech sector. Startups（初创公司） were courting court her, big companies were flexing their muscle, hoping to impress.

Ms. LACSON: It was ridiculous. There were people walking by with like, you know, shrimp cocktails - like, the unending stream of shrimp cocktails.

CHACE: Lacson starts at Microsoft this fall. Her classmates got the same treatment. Ray Douglas will be working at the University of Maryland next year. The school offered him a salary in the '50s. He just happened to mention to his boss the offers he'd gotten from other firms, which were starting in the '70s and '80s.

Mr. RAY DOUGLAS (Senior, University of Maryland): And he said, okay, we'll beat that.

CHACE: He's 22 years old.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DOUGLAS: I was just asking him. I didn't think he was going to do it.

CHACE: Tech companies, both large and small, can't find enough people to fill their open jobs. The unemployment rate for tech workers is about a third less than the national average.

Mr. JEFF WINTER (Recruiter招聘人员): I hired three new people last week.

CHACE: Jeff Winter is a recruiter in Silicon Valley（硅谷）. He finds people to fill these openings. It's Sisyphean（永远做不完的, 徒劳的）; for every job the man fills, there is a need for 10 more programmers. So he hired some people to help him hire some people.

Mr. WINTERS: I have, right now on my desk, 12 clients with anywhere between, you know, six to 10 jobs a piece, it seems.

CHACE: Winter says it hasn't been like this since 1999 when the dot com bubble（指网络经济） created a similar labor shortage. Startup companies were desperate to hire web developers. Today's companies are desperate to hire APP developers. Like Unity Technologies（一游戏开发技术供应商） in San Francisco. They have more than ten openings. I asked CEO David Helgason for a pitch

Mr. DAVID HELGASON (CEO, Unity Technologies): Unity Technologies is a company that's sort of an engineering-driven company and products-driven company.

CHACE: I played the pitch for the students. Ray Douglas was candid.

Mr. RAY DOUGLAS (Student): It sounded pretty much like every pitch that a software company has given me. They're always like, oh, we do all these fantastic things, everyone in the world wants to use it.

CHACE: Ouch. So what's a tech company to do? One thing: drop the whole years of experience requirement. That makes these jobs harder to fill. And also, you might just be embarrassing yourself, says Ederlan Lacson.

Ms. EDERLAN LACSON: They'll demand a skill set that, you know, for example, 10 years of experience with this programming language. I'm like, this programming language hasn't existed for 10 years.

CHACE: The only thing holding back computer science majors in the job market, Lacson tells me, might be their social skills. Silicon Valley recruiter Jeff Winter says be nice. And he could make you the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Mr. WINTERS: The ones that aren't nice though, they don't get their Zuck. You know Zuck, right?

CHACE: Uh, yeah? Zuck founded Facebook.

Mr. WINTERS: No Zuck for you.

CHACE: Don't I know it. But Facebook is looking for someone. They're hiring a head of their IT department and they haven't been able to find anyone.

Zoe Chace, NPR News.