Utah recruiters are coming to the Bay Area hoping to pull the talent from Silicon Valley and looking for experienced engineers willing to make a move.
The Air Force is not looking for military recruits, but engineers.They hope to hire people for its repair depot outside of Salt Lake City, Utah.
Jim Seeley is from Salt Lake and told ABC7 he needs 100 engineers and hopes to find them on Wednesday at San Francisco's Hotel Whitcomb on Market Street.
"Our biggest need is for electrical engineers. We also hire mechanical, aerospace, material engineers, computer engineers," said Seeley.
Seeley says he normally recruits at college universities, but came here hoping to find engineers with work experience.
"We came here specifically to tap the journeyman market and see what's available," said Seeley.
On Tuesday in Stockton, the same Hire Event organizers got a huge turnout. Kathy Caricato, from the California Job Journal, says there are 500 jobs being offered at Wednesday's event in San Francisco.
"Contracting officers, purchasing agents, contracting negotiators, lots of sales positions," said Caricato.
Caricato says about half of the recruiters are from government agencies looking for civilian workers. Seeley said the engineering jobs he is offering pay between $50,000 and $60,000 a year, but it's cheaper to live in Utah and there is job security.
"The one nice thing about the government is that it's big and the 42 years I've been on base, we've never laid off an engineer," said Seeley.
Those jobs at the Air Force base will not be impacted by a three-year spending freeze that the president is proposing in his State of the Union speech.
