Mindbank Receives Grant To Alleviate High Tech Worker Shortage.

VIENNA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 28, 1998--Mindbank Consulting Group of Vienna, has been awarded a $325,000 grant from The Northern Virginia Regional Partnership (NVRP) for a program expected to add new people to the area's IT workforce in as little as six to eight weeks.

"High-tech recruiting merely shifts information technology professionals from one company to another," said Neal S. Grunstra, Mindbank president. "With the NVRP grant, Mindbank can actually grow the IT workforce."

The grant covers startup and implementation costs of a Mindbank-proposed program to develop IT workers. Additional first-year costs will come from Mindbank and from companies enrolling their technology candidates.

According to Grunstra, non-IT people already in the workforce represent a huge pool that can be productive in IT jobs with four to eight weeks of intensive programming language training.

"Seventy-three percent of the IT workforce," Grunstra contends, "is functioning with other than a computer science degree. The Mindbank(SM) Bootstrap Program will help companies turn current staff into the knowledge workers they need."

Participating companies will identify candidates for training or cross-training at two levels: (1) existing technical staff who, with additional training, can fill higher level IT requirements and (2) non-technical staff with a high "IT quotient" -- aptitude, attitude and interest -- who can be trained in demand-driven IT disciplines.

Part of the NVRP grant will help to defray the employers' costs for training, full-time pay and benefits for employees during training.

Employees selected will attend tailored technical courses on a full- or part-time basis, depending on employer preference. Within a month or two, they will be back on the job full-time with newly-minted skills. The Bootstrap Program will be operational by year's end.

In announcing the funding award, David Hunn, director of the NVRP Regional Workforce Development Coordinating Center, said, "Mindbank's innovative concept is expected to be of great value to the IT community. The proposed retraining program promises to help companies fill lT positions in a way that makes economic sense for both employer and employee."

By targeting their own employees, employers will fill IT requirements with graduates whose work habits and strengths are already known and can begin to recoup lost opportunity costs from long-standing IT vacancies.

"For an investment less than the costs of recruiting, companies net hard-to-get IT personnel and entry level IT workers that do not exist in the current market," Grunstra said. "Ultimately, this solution to the IT worker shortage can impact the regional economy and become a template for rapid response to changing technology needs."

The Northern Virginia Regional Partnership is a private/public coalition of leaders from industry, local government, education and civic associations charged with fostering collaborative strategies to meet the workforce needs of Northern Virginia's high technology industry.

Mindbank, which specializes in high technology contract staffing, placement and customized technical training, is the largest privately-held temporary staffing company in the D.C. area. Headquartered in Vienna, the 12-year-old company also has offices in Bethesda, Md., Atlanta, Denver, and Toronto.