Jackson Free Press

In my 10 years of living in California, I never once heard anyone play the "Name Game" with another Californian. Yet, within my first day back in Mississippi, I was part of a conversation that takes place in thousands of variations on any given day around here:

Fellow Mississippian: "You're from Mississippi? Where are you from?"
Me: "A little town called Richton, near Hattiesburg."
FM: "Oh, my daughter's college roommate is from Richton! Do you know the McSwains?"
Me: "Of course, Ken and Linda Sue. They are some of my parents' best friends. What about you?"
FM: "A little town called DeKalb not too far from Meridian. Have you heard of it?"
Me: "Definitely: My mom grew up there. Did you know Margaret McCully?"

As we all know, that conversation can go on and on, and it isn't just a local phenomenon. Two Mississippians who meet in New York City, Lisbon or Nicaragua are going to do the same thing.

So how, then, did Silicon Valley birth Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp and a zillion other social-media companies, instead of Mississippi? We have been making everything social and building connections for so long that it is permanently in our bloodstream.

One possible reason is that it is hard—sometimes company-strangling hard—to bring creative and professional talent to Mississippi to profit and grow at the cutting edge.

Last year, Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann convened a committee of like-minded technology entrepreneurs to discuss ways that the state could encourage more high-tech growth. Attendees placed all sorts of ideas on the table—tax credits, incentive packages, intellectual-property protection and many other pro-business concepts—but the overriding concern that hampered growth for everyone was the same: recruiting.

My company has had open positions for senior technology leaders that have taken far too long to fill. A medical-specialty department at a major local hospital can't find a director, so it drifts leaderless and its physicians are leaving.

A successful high-technology company with an ardent Mississippi-focused executive team—exactly the kind we want to nurture—has had to do most of its recent hiring in Atlanta and Dallas to find the staff it needs to keep growing.

As part of that committee's effort, Joel Bomgar, the CEO of one of Mississippi's most promising tech companies (Bomgar Corp.), put together a great framework for considering our recruiting situation—the Five Cs. The first four of these five Cs are easy to tick off with four fingers:

• Climate. August here may be a beast, but for people sick of frigid, snowy winters (this past one notwithstanding), our mild Januaries and Februaries sound great.

• Culture. A hospitable, low-stress, safe, affordable lifestyle where your kids are going to see their friends at church looks like a godsend to parents anxious to reduce the speed of their rat race.

• Career. Because of the "small pond" Mississippi affords, it can be easier to be a "big fish" and jump up a few rungs on the career ladder, leading to responsibilities and opportunities that come with a bigger title.

• Compensation. Sell your run-of-the-mill house for $750,000 in one of the major metropolitan areas around the country, and then see what that money will get you around here. You might conclude you've won the lottery. It's tough for Mississippi companies to offer higher-than-global-market salaries and remain competitive, and it's also tough for most people to accept lower-than-global-market salaries when moving to a low-profile place like Mississippi. But the prices here for big-ticket items, particularly housing, can help standard compensation feel like a major raise.

Those four key Cs certainly provide the basis for a recruitment package that can attract attention, but the fifth C is the amplifier for all the others. It is the opposable thumb that makes those four fingers far more useful: connection.

When a potential recruit has a connection to Mississippi, a company can assume he or she knows the climate and career qualities of Mississippi and adjust the career or compensation values in a reasonable way.

Without that connection, companies are going to have their work cut out for them. They will need to go to greater lengths to sell our merits, address our shortcomings, and still go big with the career and compensation elements of the offer.

I have seen the critical role connection plays when recruiting to Mississippi, and the other members of Hosemann's committee said the same.

One tech executive who has been hiring in Mississippi for more than 20 years said that any time he has been under pressure to manage a hiring growth spurt, he has instructed his recruiters to throw out all resumes without a clear Mississippi connection. He knows from costly experience that those particular recruitment efforts will be long and, quite likely, fruitless.

Yet when that connection exists, we agreed that the result could be fantastic for all involved. An executive had a Mississippi-born spouse whose parents are getting ill and needed family nearby. A bachelor who left Jackson for Silicon Valley decided the guy-girl ratio wasn't working in his favor. A couple of Ole Miss grads who felt unconnected to their community in Chicago remembered what being at the Grove felt like. A growing family in Washington, D.C., envisioned a life with less traffic and more family time with grandparents.

For the right people, we have priceless incentives to offer. The key is connection.

So how do we go about finding it? It was a recurring question for committee members, and one without a good answer. For a society that is so social, how do we reach that native Mississippian or spouse, unhappy with his or her non-Mississippi reality but who believes that career options are limited to the coasts, and tell them that globally competitive options are here?

I am still trying to find strategies that work. Soon I will be testing advertisements in university alumni magazines. I can post opportunities to Facebook or LinkedIn, but they are not likely to get too far past my own limited network.

My list of ideas is too short.

What are your ideas? This is a question whose answers could benefit us all, and I would like to get as many suggestions as possible out in the open.

Please take the time to post a comment with your experiences and ideas under this article at jacksonfreepress.com. If you are reticent to post a comment for whatever reason, we can get your thoughts posted via an email to [e-mail missing].

Help us all connect in the future. There's no excuse not to speak your mind.

Henry Jones is a Mississippian and technology entrepreneur, currently serving as CTO of Mav6 in Vicksburg and as director of the Center for Battlefield Innovation at Mississippi State University.

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