Small and medium-sized companies that want to attract the best and brightest employees need to establish their company as a place where people want to work.

"Be committed on a day-to-day basis to grow a healthy company," said Cynthia Pasky, president and CEO of Strategic Staffing Solutions in Detroit. Pasky knows a little bit about attracting employees. She founded her information-technology consulting services company in 1990, starting with three employees. Today she has 800.

Pasky said young hires often are scared. They don't want to lose their first job. "Why would someone want to work for IBM? They want a sense of security, of ethics. They want to work at a place that won't go away," she said.

"We try to make those we recruit see that we have longevity. We have 14 years of consecutive growth. We have financial strength. We are stable. Recruiting employees is a form of sales. You are selling yourself and your corporation. Apply the principles of sales."

Smaller to medium-sized companies face greater challenges in recruiting young and talented employees. They don't necessarily have the human-resources staff to recruit the top students at universities, and often they don't have the time or money to host job fairs.

Smaller companies looking for high-caliber employees should offer student internships, said University of Michigan Business School finance Professor David Brophy.

"Students seek them out because these companies give them entrepreneurial experience," he said. "Any company that has a demand for that kind of student should place themselves in the market by advertising through universities for interns. The company gets a chance to sell itself to the student."

Brophy also advised networking through organizations such as Oakland County's Automation Alley and the Ann Arbor IT Zone. Glima, Automation Alley's interactive professionals group, has five chapters in Michigan.

Beth Utton, director of Oakland County's Automation Alley member consortium in Troy, said Automation Alley has a Web site, automationalley.com, that its member companies can use to find qualified job candidates from all over the country.

Anyone can post a résumé on the site. Those résumés are sent out daily to the human-resources contacts at member companies, Utton said. In return, companies can post jobs on the site and ask those applying specific questions.

Automation Alley member companies can electronically distribute on the Web site an internship job description to schools from which they are interested in recruiting candidates.

"It's a progressive way to secure employees for the future. Our site teaches you how to set up your internship program," Utton said.

In fact, research from several sources shows internships are an excellent way to obtain talented employees. Many Michigan universities are making internships a requirement for some degrees.

At Grand Valley State University, at any time, 20 to 25 percent of the students are interning. About 50 percent of the graduates have served in an internship or co-op before they graduate.

Networking through professional organizations in your industry is another way to find talent. Greg Handel, senior director for workforce development for the Detroit Regional Chamber, said chamber members sometimes make employee referrals to each other.

"The cost of recruiting is an issue for small companies. They think twice about running ads in the paper or using an Internet employment agency," Handel said. "So networking with our chamber and other chambers is another way for them to find good people."

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