RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – The future Apple campus is a long way from being built n the Triangle but the tech giant is already recruiting Triangle talent for as many as 3,000 future positions.
And if Apple is seeking short-term office space to house its new hires, as reported by the Triangle Business Journal, it will be readily available. That’s according to the latest commercial real estate data from firm CRBE.
Multiple sources told the Triangle Business Journal’s Caleb Harshberger that the company is considering identifying a temporary office site to lease. A landing place could be 200,000 square feet of space at the Cary-based MetLife campus in “Building 3.”
But a source told WRAL TechWire today that there’s a rumor making the rounds that the deal has fallen through.
Apple has declined comment about when hiring will begin in the Triangle.
Apple also may elect to hire employees and keep them working remotely, either in the short-term, or until the completion of its campus location in Research Triangle Park. One recruiter says that’s what he has been told.
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Jake Shepherd, senior managing director at VacoBuilt Engineering and Services, told WRAL TechWire of several contacts who were contacted by Apple recruiters during the week of the announcement of the Triangle facility. He also said he’s heard from multiple contacts that the company’s teams will remain remote from locations in Raleigh-Durham until the company’s new campus is built.
And Thomas Kenna, principal of Occupier Solutions, said he expects Apple to hire a few hundred people and onboard those staff members locally, before the completion of their new campus facility.
Apple plans to offer wages that far outpace the median average income, including an average wage of about $187,000 after the third year. With technology companies across the Triangle already competing for talent, and thousands of jobs currently open, Apple’s move into recruitment may shift the talent market in the short-, mid-, and long-term.
“This is going to be a really important R&D facility for decades, and they’ve chosen to locate it in North Carolina,” John Connaughton, professor of financial economics at the Belk College of Business at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte told WRAL TechWire.
A company doesn’t make this kind of decision, with the scale of its hiring and growth plans, across decades, without believing there’s a talent pipeline present to support growth, argued Connaughton.
Several jobs at Apple have shown up recently on sites such as Indeed.com and Glassdoor, but some of those appear linked to Apple retail stores in Raleigh and Durham.
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It makes sense the company would enter the talent market quickly, given the job market in the region and the talented people who already live in the region.
“Regarding who may benefit from the direct Apple jobs,” said Duke University professor John Quinterno in a recent interview with WRAL TechWire, “it does seem like the assumption is that many will be filled by outsiders.”
That would be suboptimal, said Quinterno, noting that if most of the best jobs go to economic transplants, the employment benefits, and thus economic benefits, to regular North Carolinians, including local graduating college and university students, will be limited.
Companies recruit talent from wherever they can find solid candidates for their open roles, said Craig Stone, founder and CEO of HireNetworks.
Technology managers of companies already operating in the Triangle may be in the midst of planning and executing recruiting and retention strategy, worried about what the recent announcements from Google and Apple could mean for their teams and their workforce, Greg Brown, UNC Kenan Institute Professor of Finance, told WRAL TechWire the day Apple made its announcement.
“It’s not like there are thousands of engineers sitting around in the Triangle twiddling their thumbs waiting for Apple or Google,” said Brown.
Where might Apple’s new Triangle employees work?
Office space is available, and the commercial real estate market continues to add square footage, with 3.1 million square feet of commercial real estate under construction in the Triangle at the end of 2020, according to the latest available data from CRBE.
Te report described the Raleigh-Durham market as well-positioned for the long-term, noting that as of the fourth quarter of 2020, the Triangle market was outperforming the national averages in office-using employment growth, office vacancy rate, and office absorption rate.
Their data shows that the office market experienced 170,000 square feet of net absorption during the fourth quarter of 2020, with the total for the calendar year reaching a net of 707,000 square feet. One result of an increase in net absorption rate is a “healthy” vacancy rate at 11.3 percent overall, lower than the 5-year average of 13.1 percent, including 9.9 percent vacancy in Class A buildings.
