During the past few days several people have approached us wondering why we are continuing to do college recruiting and continuing with the floor build out given the state of the company today.  We appreciate people's concerns about adding people and spending money at a time when we ought to be reducing unnecessary expenses.  Let us begin by saying that we share these concerns and are not hiring people or undertaking significant capital expenditures without a great deal of thought.  We would also encourage people to talk to their manager or either of us if you don't understand why we are doing certain things.  In short, we have decided to continue with the college recruiting, although we have not yet decided how many, if any, we will hire.  We have decided to delay the beginning of the floor build out for a couple of weeks.

Why Are We Continuing With College Recruiting?
During the last few years we have made tremendous progress establishing a presence for Enron broadly and the Portland office specifically with leading schools in the northwest.  This past year we finally reached critical mass and had tremendous success in our recruiting efforts.  Although we are uncertain about our hiring needs this year, we feel that it is in our best long term interest to continue having a presence with the schools in the northwest.  We have already made presentations and done initial screenings at most schools.  We have identified the best people from each school and have already made plans for them to come to our office for two super Saturdays.  The cost to us to finish this process is not large compared to the benefit that we gain from honoring our commitment to the schools and students as participants in their on-campus recruiting programs.  We also realize that it is a hard year to be coming out of school looking for a job.  It is our belief that students would rather interview with us even if the possibilities of employment may be somewhat diminished.  Finally, we would like to emphasize the point that we have not yet committed to hiring anybody.  We will interview people, identify the best candidates, and make hiring decisions based on the needs of the office.  Before extending offers we will consider the potential impact that it could have on people in this office and Enron employees in other offices who have been redeployed.  Stated another way, we don't intend to hire a bunch of new people if there are people within Enron who could fill positions or if it would put the jobs of the people already here at risk.  We may end up postponing hiring decisions until we are more certain about the state of affairs in the company.

How Will the Floor Move Play Out?
We have decided to postpone the floor build out for a few weeks.  While we still think that it makes sense for the office, we have decided to pause for a couple of weeks before we start to spend significant amounts of money on this.  When talking to the build out team today it became clear that delaying would accomplish several goals.  First, it allows us to get final architectural plans in place and firm quotes from contractors so that we can more precisely peg down the costs before moving forward.  Second, it gives the build out team breathing room to iron out more of the details of the move.  Finally, it buys us a little more time to decide whether or not it makes sense to do this project given the state of affairs of the company right now.  While we still think that we are going to move forward with this project, it seems like buying a couple of weeks of time is the right thing to do right now.  In about two weeks we will reconvene with the build out team with firm budget numbers and make a decision to either move ahead, cancel, or delay again.  

As always, we will try to keep people updated on things as soon as new, reliable information becomes available.  We recognize that this is a very hard time for everyone.  Please try to stay focused on the job at hand and keep up the success of this office.



Tim Belden and Chris Calger