Nortel Offers $1 Million to Find New Workers

High-tech talent is so scarce these days that Canada’s Nortel Networks Corp. is offering $1 million in cash and prizes to its employees for enticing skilled friends and family to join the company. The world’s second-largest maker of network equipment said it is prepared to up the ante if necessary to fill 5,300 optical Internet positions. For every new hire, the referring employee gets $2,000 and the chance to enter five drawings, each with a prize of $100,000. Employees get a $10,000 bonus for bringing in three people and $20,000 for five. About 1,000 of the 5,300 optical jobs are in Canada, with the rest in the United States and Britain. In two weeks the $1-million carrot has attracted 1,941 applications. At the heart of the hiring drive is a booming market for optical networking equipment created by the rapid building of high-speed Internet networks.