MetLife continues hiring binge in the Triangle

By Amanda Jones Hoyle of the Triangle Business Journal

MetLife is already ahead of its hiring projections for its new global technology and operations hub in the Triangle and still receiving about 1,000 new resumes a week.

That's according to Geoff Lang, who has been leading the Triangle operations for MetLife (NYSE: MET) since last July and Jim O'Donnell, who moved here from New York and officially took over as site leader for MetLife's GTO hub on Jan. 1.

I visited with both executives on Thursday following a charity grant presentation at the Kramden Institute in Durham to get an update on the insurance giant's hiring progress and details on how they are fitting in.

Currently, about 400 of the 1,200 jobs that MetLife has promised to create at its new Cary campus have already been filled.

O'Donnell says their goal is to have more than 700 employees hired in the Triangle by the end of 2014, but current projections could even push the numbers beyond 1,000 people by the end of the year.

"We are exceeding our plans here, which is a great problem to have," O'Donnell says.

Since late April 2013, Lang says they have received more than 52,000 resumes for the jobs MetLIfe will be creating in the Triangle, or an average 1,000 resumes a week. Last week they have 1,400 new resumes on file.

He's already concerned that they'll run out of space in their temporary office building in the Imperial Center office park in Durham before their new campus in Cary is finished in mid-2015.

"I'm already in planning for that because we are already running out of space," Lang says.

In response to reports that companies like MetLife, Fidelity Investments and Red Hat are having trouble finding talent with the engineering and technology skills they need, O'Donnell says there are always certain skill sets that will be hard to fill, particularly related to big data and analytics.

"Maybe you have change they way you recruit those people or change the job description," he says, "but overall we've had incredible success recruiting here. The word is getting out there."

This summer, MetLife will be launching two internship and training programs targeting local university students and graduates, MetLife University and MetLife Tech University.

MetLife University will begin June 2 offering internships to 20 college students.

MetLife Tech University will begin July 14 for about 50 recent college graduates interested in a career at MetLife. The tech program will be a six-month training program and after which graduates will be placed in full-time positions within MetLife.

"We have, of course, had internship programs before, but this is taking it to the next level," O'Donnell says.

MetLife has also initiated a detailed five-day training program for all new hires that goes through MetLife's strategy and how the company operates. "We don't just hire them and throw them in," Lang says.

MetLIfe is currently hosting a new-employee training class every two weeks. The last one had 40 new hires.

"It's so big now we have to hold it in the cafeteria," says Lang, who leads the on-board training program.

MetLife's operations are temporarily based at an office building in the Imperial Center business park in Durham, but the hub operations will begin moving in summer 2015 into its two new buildings under construction on Weston Parkway in Cary.

MetLife and its local landlord and real estate developer, Raleigh-based Highwoods Properties (NYSE: HIW), broke ground in November on the massive $110 million new office campus for MetLife that will overlook Lake Crabtree on Weston Parkway in Cary.

The first building is slated to finish in spring 2015, and the second building will open a couple of months later.

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