Is it tough to hire a skilled workforce in Idaho? It depends.

Paylocity has hired 100 employees in the past year and expects to hire up to 500 people in the next three years. Heartland RV has also found talent for its new manufacturing facility in Nampa. For companies looking to relocate, there are workers, according to the Boise Valley Economic Partnership, which works to increase business growth in the Treasure Valley.

But ask people in the hiring trenches, and you get a different story.

“It’s been challenging hiring skilled workers across the U.S., but specific to Idaho,” said Louisa Waldman, a vice president who oversees the offices in Oregon and Idaho for Robert Half, a California-based employment agency. “It continues to be more and more of a challenge every day.”

Panelists at the October Idaho Business Review Breakfast Series “Low-key and High Tech,” agreed. “We’ve done about 20 focus groups over the last seven years across the state,” said Jay Larsen, president of the Idaho Technology Council. “The No. 1 problem they face is around talent.”

“We’ve grown pretty rapidly. We hired 150 people in 2015, and finding those folks was certainly a bit of a challenge for us,” said George Mulhern, CEO at Cradlepoint Technology, who also spoke at the Breakfast Series.

“But there’s a flip side to that challenge,” Mulhern said. “It takes longer to find people, but our attrition rate and our turnover is about 25 percent of what it is in the Bay Area. So we have to recruit nationally.”

Part of the problem with workforce in Idaho is the low unemployment rate, both statewide and nationwide. Waldman said the national unemployment rate for skilled workers is 2.7 percent. The shortage of skilled workers is felt particularly keenly in fields such as accounting and finance, legal support, administrative support, healthcare, and call centers.

““It’s even lower in Idaho – we’re virtually at full employment,” Waldman said.

When Heartland RV did a job fair in March, 410 people applied for positions, said Mike Bellovich, head of HR at the company’s headquarters in Indiana.  Bellovich said Heartland hired about 30 people for its Nampa plant after the job fair and slowly increased staffing to 120 as production increased at the facility. The company expects to have 275 people working there by the end of 2018, said Bellovich.

But he added that while the number of applicants has been high, the plant manager hasn’t necessarily had an easy time filling positions with people who have the right skills and who are willing to work steadily in a permanent position.

“I know that he’s contemplating at this point maybe reaching out to a temporary service that would help staffing,” he said. “It’s about finding the right people.”

Idaho technology companies have worked closely with local colleges to increase the number of computer programmers. But those programmers are still in high demand.

“Finding those people in this market is very hard, because the alternatives are very high-paying jobs at great other companies,” said Raino Zoller, executive director at Trailhead, a downtown Boise nonprofit business co-working space. “So I think at the early, early stage the challenge is to find the people to help build the products.”

BVEP is a division of the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce that is the regional economic development organization for Ada, Boise, Canyon, Gem, and Owyhee counties. This year, BVEP created a position specifically devoted to helping companies find and attract specialized talent. The nonprofit organization also started holding workshops this year to help companies create internships.

What Waldman is seeing now is people moving into Idaho from out of state – for example, a couple where one member already has a job and the other is seeking one. She said that one hindrance to hiring in Idaho is that jobs in Idaho tend to pay less than those in other states – on the order of 86 percent of the national average, according to Robert Half figures.

“Certainly there are people who think their skill sets are worth more in another state,” she said. But she added that the cost of living in Idaho is significantly lower than in some other markets. Economists say Idaho housing prices compare favorably with those in many larger metro areas, even when salaries are taken into account.

Don’t expect the talent crunch to subside. “We anticipate strong growth in 2017,” with starting salaries expected to increase by 3.6 percent nationally, Waldman said.

While skilled talent is available outside the U.S., for a lower price, their initiative is limited, said Proskriptive CEO Michael Hollenbeck at the IBR Breakfast Series event. “I can get a college grad in Boise, Idaho, who is a .net programmer who has maybe 6 minutes of experience and I can pay him about $60,000-80,000. Or I could pay $11 an hour to Nihal in Hyderabad, and he’s been doing this for 12 years,” he said. “What I need locally are people who can see the field, who can help me create the plan, who can understand the technology and help me build the road map.”

If you’re trying to hire skilled talent in Idaho, and you’ve found someone you would like to bring on board, don’t dilly-dally in making an offer, Waldman advised. “Move quickly,” she said. “People are in high demand and likely have multiple offers.” Similarly, understand what’s important to that potential employee and look to what benefits to offer, such as remote access and a less-stringent dress code. “As an employer, you need to be more creative,” she said.

Alternatively, look for ways to gain needed talent through training, which also helps companies retain those staffers, Waldman suggested. Robert Half is seeing more companies making counteroffers with salary and benefit increases to try to retain employees, she said. Companies should also look for ways to partner with higher education organizations to help develop the talent pipeline, BVEP Marketing Manager Lisa Holland said.