Update: IBM plans to add 15,000 new jobs worldwide

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January 19, 2004 (IDG News Service) -- Fresh from a profitable quarter, IBM has announced plans to hire 15,000 additional employees worldwide, with 4,500 of the new hires occuring in the U.S. and the remainder in China, India and Europe.

The hiring plans come just days after the company reported a 9.4% increase in fourth-quarter revenue, to $25.9 billion (see story), and predicted that 2004 would herald the return of the IT industry growth cycle.

IBM currently has 315,889 employees worldwide, according to its Web site, and the new hires will bump it to almost 331,000.

Although not wanting to be too specific, IBM spokesman Clint Roswell said the company will be hiring primarily in strategic growth areas such as services, software and Linux development.

"I think we all know where the high-in-demand skills are -- a lot of it is around Linux, Web services, a lot of it is in services, as well," Roswell said. "So when I say it is in Linux development, whether it be enterprise or security, and software, Web services, I think you get the message."

Roswell also confirmed a $200 million investment in the training for approximately 100,000 employees in hot skills area.

Jamie Snowdon, research director for IDC in the U.K., said that the announcement means that not only is IBM happy with its fourth-quarter performance but that it expects positive recovery in the first quarter of this year as well.

"When vendors aren't coy about saying things like that, it means that they won't have a bad first quarter," he said.

Snowdon predicted that most of the new jobs would be created in the software and services divisions, and particularly in client-facing positions.

"IBM is ramping up its business consulting, so there may be some very high-end consulting jobs being created in the U.S.," he said.

In reporting its quarterly results last week, the company said that it had strong growth in its services and personal systems group worldwide.

The announcement comes in the wake of a series of job cuts, during which the company said it was trying to cut costs and reduce job redundancies. The latest trimming was made earlier this month when IBM slashed 400 U.S.-based software and services jobs.

Although the job cuts came in the same areas where Snowdon predicts the new positions will be created, he doesn't see a contradiction.

The recent job cuts were most likely lower-paying positions that could easily be outsourced or moved overseas, whereas the new positions are probably in high-end or customer-facing areas, he said.

Computerworld's Linda Rosencrance contributed to this story.

Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2008 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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