LAST year the Government held an auction for UK licences to build the third generation of cellular phone technology.

Now the successful bidders need to build the network and design the technology for the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone Service), which will provide new features including video conferencing.

Although some telecoms companies have put a freeze on taking on new staff and in the States redundancies have been made, the race is now on to build the UMTS as quickly as possible to be first on the market.

That's where Close Communications comes in.

The international recruitment company specialising in telecoms is urgently recruiting trained personnel to build these networks.

"We have vacancy lists of up to 200 people to recruit," said James Clow, who set up Close Communications in Asheridge Road, Chesham, with fellow director Steve Rose. Their main markets are the UK and Europe.

They set up the company two-and-a-half years ago, recruiting for overseas (second generation) start-up projects and are now well positioned to be the leading third-generation recruitment company. They are now looking forward to a period of steady growth over the next two years as the technology is rolled out globally.

The big problem for the industry in the UK, said Steve, will be how to retain specialist staff once they have been trained on the UMTS technology to prevent them being head-hunted or moving abroad as highly paid consultants.

"One of our challenges is to advise these companies how to retain these people. For instance; agree longer notice periods, offer share options, tie employees into the cost of training should they leave and to be very selective at interview," said Steve.

Close Communications has recently opened a new division offering human resource software and solutions to start-up telecoms projects. One such project is underway in Sweden where Close has partnered an IT recruitment company to deliver a complete contract recruitment service.

"We are now in discussions with several operators to develop our interim recruitment methodology as an integral part of their network rollout strategy," said Steve.

For more information visit the Close Communications website at: www.closecom.com

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