Phone
The mobile-phone maker has more than 600 positions to fill, mostly in North America. RIM boosted its workforce by 50 percent to about 12,000 last year, he said in an interview last week at headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario.
RIM is adding software developers, engineers and salespeople as companies like Motorola Inc., Nokia Oyj and Microsoft Corp. eliminate thousands of jobs. The phone maker, run by Lazaridis and Co-CEO Jim Balsillie, is seeking the manpower to preserve sales growth, which analysts predict will decline to its lowest level in at least six years in 2009.
“We have so much work to do,” said Lazaridis, 48. “Weve got two co-CEOs and were both tired.”
While sales fell last year at Nokia and Motorola, which get the bulk of phone revenue from more basic devices, RIM sold more handsets that surf the Web, send e-mail and play video. Still, analysts predict the pace of sales growth will drop by more than half to 35 percent, hurt by the deepening recession and increasing competition from Palm Inc. and Apple Inc.
“You dont want to be caught in the situation that you underhire, but if your revenues slow down quickly, you can get caught,” said Morgan Keegan & Co. analyst Tavis McCourt in Nashville. “Youll see less aggressive growth in hardware engineer recruitment in future.” He rates the stock “outperform.”
BlackBerry for Everyone
RIM accelerated hiring in the past few years after expanding beyond corporate customers such as bankers to target consumers with models like the Pearl, which includes a music player and a camera.
The company is now seeking growth from small businesses and field workers, including salespeople, Lazaridis said. Carriers such as Canadas Rogers Communications Inc. have highlighted BlackBerrys small-business appeal in ads touting their ability to track shipments from the road and order materials online.
In a recession, salespeople will have to be “spending more time with customers, more time on the road, drumming up business,” Lazaridis said. “Everyone in business, in every job, is going to have something that is their personal communicator. Were doing our best to make sure that thats a BlackBerry.”
RIM advanced 86 cents to $64.76 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading at 9:33 a.m. New York time. The stock had gained 57 percent this year before today.
RIMs hiring plan contrasts with reductions at other technology companies. Motorola, the biggest U.S. phone maker, eliminated 4,000 jobs in January in its latest round of cuts. Nokia, the No. 1 globally, slashed 1,700 jobs in January.
Microsoft, which makes software for phones that compete with the BlackBerry, said in January it plans to reduce up to 5,000 positions, the first companywide firings in its 34-year history. Google Inc., whose software runs the G1 smart phone, said last month it will cut 200 sales and marketing jobs.
Balsillie, 48, joined RIM as co-CEO in 1992 and oversees business development, sales, marketing and finance. Lazaridis, who founded RIM while still a student at the University of Waterloo in 1984, is in charge of research, product development and manufacturing.
Lazaridis has kept close ties with the university, and his company typically hires 1,500 of its students annually on four- month contracts, allowing them to gain work experience.
As of today, RIM had 469 job openings in the Americas, 88 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and 51 in Asia-Pacific. Still, the company is demanding about whom it recruits and wont necessarily hire as many as that, Lazaridis said. It could recruit one engineer to take on multiple tasks, or leave a post vacant until the right candidate comes along, he said.
“Weve built this business on some really spectacular talent and some great chemistry,” Lazaridis said. “Were not about to let that down.”