(The following story by Stacie Hamel appeared on the Omaha World-Herald website on April 2.)
OMAHA — More than 180 Union Pacific employees will stay put in St. Louis rather than move with their jobs to Omaha. That means openings here, with the majority in information technology.
“It’s going to be great,” said Adam Haeder of Omaha’s Applied Information Management Institute. “It’s going to be a really good boost for the job market in Omaha on the IT side.”
The total includes about 120 information technology, 20 accounting and 40 customer service jobs, though those numbers could change because employees still might change their minds about moving, company officials said.
The Omaha-based corporation announced in January that 1,038 was the final tally of jobs to be moved from St. Louis to its new headquarters. The total included 300 IT jobs that U.P. had planned to leave in St. Louis.
The number of St. Louis employees choosing to leave the company rather than move isn’t surprising, said Barbara Schaefer, senior vice president of human resources. The prediction was 20 percent.
“That’s about where we’re at,” she said. “Clearly, we’re going to replace more of the IT people than we thought.”
The IT job market in St. Louis is heating up, and some skills are particularly in demand.
“There are some people who have hot skills that would be hot in any market,” Schaefer said.
Deciding to move also can be difficult.
“Change is just hard. But that is why we’re trying to make it as easy as we can. We want people to come here and love it,” she said.
The company offers a Buddy Up program that pairs St. Louis employees with Omahans, helps find work for “trailing spouses” and maintains a Web site that offers relocation aids, such as information on Omaha churches, schools and neighborhoods.
Finding people to fill openings shouldn’t be too challenging, she said. The company is advertising, placing information on its Web site and contacting colleges.
The University of Nebraska’s Peter Kiewit Institute “is a great resource. We’ve gotten great people from there,” Shaefer said.
Requirements for the IT openings range from little experience to eight or more years, and bachelor’s degrees or comparable technical experience up to master’s degrees. Pay ranges from $45,000 to $70,000.
Specific job descriptions are available on AIM Institute’s CareerLink, which can be reached through the jobs area on Union Pacific’s Web site: www.up.com.
The range of IT positions is just what Omaha needs, said Haeder, AIM’s vice president for information technology.
“One of the complaints people have had here is that positions were just for five years or 10 years of experience,” he said. “U.P. is a large enough organization that they are looking for a range of people.”
The IT jobs aren’t the only ones making an impact. A recent newspaper advertisement for payroll, customer service and crew scheduling positions drew nearly 1,000 responses, Schaefer said.
Pay begins at about $38,000 a year for those positions. About 20 of the non-IT jobs are covered by unions.
CareerLink has 3,400 jobs posted in Nebraska. A significant number – though not all – are IT jobs, Haeder said.
“I think it is turning around for Omaha,” he said. “I can’t think of another city that has this combination of information technology opportunities and low cost of living. . . . None of them are even close.”