Message-ID: <1702949.1075840026855.JavaMail.evans@thyme> Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 19:01:05 -0800 (PST) From: diana.scholtes@enron.com To: sean.crandall@enron.com Subject: FW: Recruiting and Floor Buildout Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-From: Scholtes, Diana X-To: Crandall, Sean X-cc: X-bcc: X-Folder: \ExMerge - Scholtes, Diana\Sent Items X-Origin: SCHOLTES-D X-FileName: -----Original Message----- From: =09Belden, Tim =20 Sent:=09Tuesday, October 30, 2001 2:48 PM To:=09DL-Portland World Trade Center Cc:=09Lavorato, John; Kitchen, Louise Subject:=09Recruiting and Floor Buildout During the past few days several people have approached us wondering why we= are continuing to do college recruiting and continuing with the floor buil= d out given the state of the company today. We appreciate people's concern= s about adding people and spending money at a time when we ought to be redu= cing unnecessary expenses. Let us begin by saying that we share these conc= erns and are not hiring people or undertaking significant capital expenditu= res without a great deal of thought. We would also encourage people to tal= k to their manager or either of us if you don't understand why we are doing= certain things. In short, we have decided to continue with the college re= cruiting, although we have not yet decided how many, if any, we will hire. = We have decided to delay the beginning of the floor build out for a couple= of weeks. Why Are We Continuing With College Recruiting? During the last few years we have made tremendous progress establishing a p= resence for Enron broadly and the Portland office specifically with leading= schools in the northwest. This past year we finally reached critical mass= and had tremendous success in our recruiting efforts. Although we are unc= ertain about our hiring needs this year, we feel that it is in our best lon= g term interest to continue having a presence with the schools in the north= west. We have already made presentations and done initial screenings at mo= st schools. We have identified the best people from each school and have a= lready made plans for them to come to our office for two super Saturdays. = The cost to us to finish this process is not large compared to the benefit = that we gain from honoring our commitment to the schools and students as pa= rticipants in their on-campus recruiting programs. We also realize that it= is a hard year to be coming out of school looking for a job. It is our be= lief that students would rather interview with us even if the possibilities= of employment may be somewhat diminished. Finally, we would like to empha= size the point that we have not yet committed to hiring anybody. We will i= nterview people, identify the best candidates, and make hiring decisions ba= sed on the needs of the office. Before extending offers we will consider t= he potential impact that it could have on people in this office and Enron e= mployees in other offices who have been redeployed. Stated another way, we= don't intend to hire a bunch of new people if there are people within Enro= n who could fill positions or if it would put the jobs of the people alread= y here at risk. We may end up postponing hiring decisions until we are mor= e certain about the state of affairs in the company. How Will the Floor Move Play Out? We have decided to postpone the floor build out for a few weeks. While we = still think that it makes sense for the office, we have decided to pause fo= r a couple of weeks before we start to spend significant amounts of money o= n this. When talking to the build out team today it became clear that dela= ying would accomplish several goals. First, it allows us to get final arch= itectural plans in place and firm quotes from contractors so that we can mo= re precisely peg down the costs before moving forward. Second, it gives th= e build out team breathing room to iron out more of the details of the move= . Finally, it buys us a little more time to decide whether or not it makes= sense to do this project given the state of affairs of the company right n= ow. While we still think that we are going to move forward with this proje= ct, it seems like buying a couple of weeks of time is the right thing to do= right now. In about two weeks we will reconvene with the build out team w= ith firm budget numbers and make a decision to either move ahead, cancel, o= r delay again. =20 As always, we will try to keep people updated on things as soon as new, rel= iable information becomes available. We recognize that this is a very hard= time for everyone. Please try to stay focused on the job at hand and keep= up the success of this office. Tim Belden and Chris Calger