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‘It’s dangerous, but people can triple their income in a year’

By Stephenie Overman

Publication date: 19 December 2005
Source: PM Online

Good pay encourages people to work in hostile environments overseas,
according to one of the largest employee-owned engineering and construction
companies in the US.

“It’s dangerous, but people can triple their income in a year,”
said James Ridings, director of global staffing for Parsons Corporation.
The company has won US government contracts for projects in Kosovo,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq.

The company often recruits hundreds of expatriates under tight time
constraints to work on construction projects in dangerous locations
abroad – Ridings said that once a company wins a government contract
it has only three months to get all the people it needs for the job.
“If you bid on the contract the government expects you to have
the people,” he told delegates at the Global Recruiting Forum in
Brussels.

Also speaking at the event, Ron Baulding, Parsons’ HR manager in Baghdad,
said that retention was more of a problem during the orientation period
than during the assignment itself: “A small percentage don’t come
back from leave. Since January 2004 only three people have left.”

Ridings emphasised that security was a top priority. Wherever Parsons
locates it immediately hires a local security firm.