When it comes to recruiting chemists to Bend, alternative pest-control producer Suterra LLC President Steve Hartmeier knows where he needs to look: outside Central Oregon.

”For a position like a chemist or a formulations chemist – the more specialized jobs – we’d ideally love to find one in Bend, but we’re not going to,” Hartmeier said. ”It tends to be a West Coast or national search.”

These specialized positions require workers with degrees not offered locally and that need years of experience that most workers can only get in larger cities. For employers seeking highly skilled workers, they must convince qualified personnel to move to Bend, where housing prices can be a deterrent, and wages may not match those in big cities.

In Central Oregon, employers are having the most difficulty finding trained engineers, technicians and computer professionals, according to an employer survey conducted by the Oregon Employment Department this spring. As a result, many are looking nationally or internationally for the skilled employees they need.

Other industries seeing a high demand for workers include the hospitality industry and those reliant on production workers, the survey added.

When it comes to technical jobs, regional economic officials say Central Oregon hasn’t reached the critical mass of tech-based companies that will be a magnet for engineers, scientists and information technology employees.

”Given the fact that we have no local degrees offered in technical fields (the closest is math), it pretty much dictates that local employers needing this engineering and technical talent will have to recruit it in from outside the region,” said Roger Lee, executive director of Economic Development for Central Oregon.

That may change, however, if plans to create space for light industrial use at north Bend’s Juniper Ridge are realized. Juniper Ridge is a 1,500-acre, mixed-use development that the city has slated for a research and development park, light industrial uses, a university and homes. EDCO representatives in the past have said the development could be the answer for high-tech companies interested in locating in Bend, as it would be one of the few areas left with raw land suitable for such operations.

Bend is increasingly earning a reputation as tech-friendly, says Amy Clem, marketing communications manager for the hydrogen fuel cell maker IdaTech. There, half the 74 employees are engineers, Clem said, and those workers are recruited locally, nationally and internationally.

”IdaTech has been in Central Oregon for over 10 years, and we have been pleased to see the increase in the number of high-tech companies, which therefore means an increase in the number of high-tech job opportunities,” Clem said. ”The fact that Ida-Tech is based in Bend seems to be a perk, not a hindrance.”

Off the beaten path

Still, recruiters for specialized jobs have their work cut out for them, says Gregg Patterson, CEO of PV Powered, a solar power equipment firm in Bend.

While PV Powered’s 42-person company usually hires locals for the bulk of its openings, engineering jobs are always the hardest to fill. Right now, the company is looking to hire at least a half-dozen engineers and is using Web-based recruiting tools like industry Web sites. The company also is encouraging existing workers to network with others in the industry who might want to join the firm.

”(Bend) has a relatively small technical pool, so we’ve been advertising aggressively in the Bay Area, Portland and Seattle,” Patterson said. ”I think a lot of people would love to move to Bend, but it’s hard to find them.”

For Sony’s subsidiary in Bend, creative director John Garvin says home prices are becoming a major hurdle in convincing programmers, artists and designers to move here. Most of the roughly 50-person staff of Sony Computer Entertainment America came from out of town, Garvin said, with many pulled from game-industry hot spots like Seattle, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Austin, Texas.

”We’re off the beaten path in Bend,” he said. ”We usually attract people who come here for the quality of life, and that was a lot easier to do … (10 years ago) when the median price of a home was around $125,000.”

Bend’s median sales price in May was almost $352,000.

Before Sony Computer Entertainment America bought it in 2001, the Bend game developer was known as Eidetic. Part of the reason Sony decided to come to Bend, Garvin said, was for its relatively low cost of living.

Sony isn’t currently hiring, but Garvin said the last few new hires have been unable to purchase homes in Bend. Instead, they’ve moved to cheaper areas like Redmond. Pay scales for Sony jobs range from $40,000 to near $100,000 per year, he added.

Garvin points to Redmond Airport’s limited service as preventing the region from attracting more businesses and qualified workers in his field. He regularly travels nationally and internationally to places like Tokyo for work, and says flying out of Redmond makes the trips difficult and long.

For Suterra, Bend’s cost of living can be a hurdle, but it depends on where the company is recruiting from, Hartmeier said. Employees relocating from the Midwest are more challenging to hire, but people looking to relocate from big cities can be easier to land because Bend oftentimes seems cheaper.

But changing jobs once in Bend can be difficult, Hartmeier said.

”If you are in Seattle or L.A., you can switch jobs and not have to move, but here, that’s a larger risk the employee has to take,” Hartmeier said. ”As a responsible employer, you want to make sure that if you ask somebody to uproot their family, it is the right fit.”

Both PV Powered’s Patterson and Suterra’s Hartmeier said their industries would benefit if Central Oregon gets a four-year university with programs in the sciences. The vision for Juniper Ridge includes a university.

”We’d love to have more university (access) and (education) support,” Hartmeier said, ”But I can’t see that happening in the next 20 years, to get that (employment) pool base.”