Job hunters near catbird seat

Corporate recruiters are flocking back to college campuses. People with jobs who want something better are finding they have choices.

Both are signs that after two and a half years of job growth, the balance of power in the Seattle area labor market is shifting back to workers.

"Now all of a sudden we're having to coach employers: 'When you see somebody you like, you have to make a decision really quick, because that person's going to get another job,' " said Tom Anderson, Seattle-based chief financial officer for the U.S. division of Harvey Nash, a global headhunting firm specializing in information technology and finance positions.

In December, most of the new jobs were in the broad white-collar category of professional and business services. That sector added 1,100 jobs, mainly through temp agencies, in the Seattle metro area out of 1,900 total jobs created since November.

All those professional jobs helped lower the area's unemployment rate to 4.7 percent, according to the state.

"That's just generally a reflection of strong business-to-business activity," Richard Kaglic, Washington's chief employment economist, said Tuesday.

Seattle and the state continued the solid, steady job growth of 2005, Kaglic said.

Washington state generated 5,400 new jobs — 3,700 of those in professional and business services — pushing the unemployment rate down to 5.3 percent.

That's lower than Oregon's 5.7 percent but still trails the 4.9 percent national rate.

Roberta Pauer, a private labor economist, said the Seattle area, including Bellevue and Everett, is still down 14,000 positions from pre-recession levels. The current rate of job growth "is not comparable to the magnitude of the boom in the last half of the 1990s," she said.

Anderson, the Harvey Nash executive, agreed, noting that particularly in the information-technology sector, the days of job seekers getting multiple offers and demanding signing bonuses have not returned.

Joseph Barrientos, who coordinates on-campus recruitment at Seattle University, said 58 companies attended the spring career fair, up from around 40 four years ago. There are triple the number of job openings for students, he said.

Interest is coming from a wide array of industries — reflecting the broad job growth in the state's numbers — with heavy emphasis in the services sector, Barrientos said.

"Our students that are graduating from the nursing program are getting snatched up before they walk across the stage to get their diploma," he said.

Health-services employment is up 12,200 jobs in the Seattle area since the recession.

At Bellevue Community College, Cheryl Vermilyea has seen interest from corporate recruiters return, but not like in the late 1990s.

"Even though the job market's getting better, you have to show more — more skills, more background, more education — to get those jobs than you did back then," said Vermilyea, head of BCC's career center for seven years.

David Browne, who graduated last spring from Seattle Pacific University, knows that first-hand. He has been looking for a marketing or inside sales job since November and finds himself facing the classic Catch-22 of those new to the work force.

"It just seems like it's hard for me to find a job, because a lot of places say they hire entry-level, but they want you to have experience," Browne said.

Benjamin J. Romano: bromano@seattletimes.com or 206-464-2149