Unemployment for unskilled workers is high but the market for engineers, coders, analysts is tight, so tight that finding them is, in itself, a skill.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Salesforce.com wanted to hire thousands of engineers and account executives to work in the San Francisco Bay Area.
It turned out to be a nearly impossible task.
Using a special algorithm on LinkedIn profiles, a staffer found that there were 210,000 people qualified for the jobs in the U.S., and 85,000 were in the Bay Area. Unfortunately, the company had already contacted more than a fourth of those with no luck.
So Salesforce.com, like many other companies, moves offices and tasks to places where the right workers exist or where they are going. They chose locations in Boulder, Seattle, and Vancouver.
Cities hoping to attract corporations that use this type of employee could find themselves out of luck unless area universities are churning out the right degrees, experts say.
In effect, business goes to the talent.
Other companies are changing the way the fish the pool of eligible candidates.
Talent recruitment company CEB helped an aerospace firm to find talent for its Seattle office. They did it by looking in Phoenix, Los Angeles and Fort Worth, Texas.
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