GM wants to hire 1,500 tech experts

• GM plans four new Innovation centers
• It will hire 1,500 people for its Warren, Mich., center
• Competition for IT professionals is stiff

WARREN, Mich. — You don't have to be a car junkie to get a job at General Motors' new software innovation center here, but you might have to be a coding guru — and software experts are in short supply.

GM announced this week that it plans to add 1,500 software development and data management jobs at its Warren Tech Center as part of its effort to bring 90% of its information technology work in house. Last month, GM announced the opening of a center in Austin, Texas, that will house 500 new IT jobs, the first of four planned innovation centers.

The moves catapult the automaker into a recruiting thicket crammed with the world's most innovative high-tech companies — all competing to hire a limited number of software engineers coming out of college or mid-career retraining programs.

In a competition with companies such as Amazon, Facebook and General Electric, GM will fight for recent college graduates and experienced software professionals with an eye toward reducing its digital bureaucracy.

The new hires will work to radically simplify, combine and improve the automaker's numerous software applications and data management systems to lower costs and speed product development, GM said.

GM Chief Information Officer Randy Mott, frustrated by GM's overlapping software and IT systems, is the architect of the plan designed to revolutionize the company's IT processes.

"We're currently seeking the next generation of game-changers to help us usher in a new age of automotive innovation at GM," Mott said.

But Mott, a veteran chief information officer, was hired early this year after stints at Microsoft and Walmart, has his work cut out for him.

GM already has met with Michigan universities to establish software engineering recruiting relationships.

"It's going to be a steep uphill drive for them," said Garth Motschenbacher, director of employer engagement in career services for Michigan State University. "That area is the most heavily sought-after recruited area in all the 15 (public universities) across the state and really across the nation now."

The announcement comes a month after GM opened a similar IT center in Austin, Texas, with plans to hire 500 workers over a few years. GM plans to offer some employees the chance to work in Austin and transfer back to Michigan after a few years, said Motschenbacher, who recently met with the automaker's recruiting team.

Motschenbacher said GM also must tailor its recruitment process to the intensely competitive world of software engineering, where job offers are often dealt out quickly to workers who have the appropriate experience.

"General Motors still has a very traditional internal process to recruitment," he said. "The IT computer science world doesn't fit that."

Simply finding the right talent is GM's first chore. A shortage of computer software engineers is one of the challenges the state is trying to address, said Chief Executive Michael Finney of the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

The public-private partnership launched retraining programs focused on employer needs, Finney said. Still, a skills gap is preventing thousands of unemployed workers from landing a job in areas like software engineering. A job board at the partnership's MiTalent.org lists about 65,000 unfilled job openings in the state.

But Finney said the auto industry's recruiting dilemma is easing.

"The automotive industry is now the 'in' thing," he said. "A lot of the engineers that were automatically going to other sectors and not thinking about automotive are now seeing the technology that's embedded in automotive and seeing this as exciting as anything that's going on in other sectors."

Recruiting experts said the auto industry needs to appeal to recent college graduates by reducing bureaucracy, introducing flexible work arrangements and showing prospective hires that their work will make a difference.

Another roadblock: GM needs to show prospective young employees that downtown Detroit is a cool place to hang out and live, Motschenbacher said.

"That inner city area is really getting to be this cool thing," he said. "They need to embrace that. Young people want to live in major cities."

GM now does only about 10% of its IT work; it outsources 90%.