Bank One to Hire 600 IT Professionals

Care to live in Columbus, Ohio? How about Chicago? If so, Bank One Corp.s hiring—and its hiring big.

Flying in the face of current economic conditions, the bank recently announced that it will hire 600 IT professionals over the next three months to work in those cities.

It may sound counterintuitive to staff up in the midst of a major economic slowdown, but CIO Austin Adams said the time is ripe to recruit the cream of the crop.

“It is essential to continue to invest in people and technology, even in challenging economic times,” said Adams, in a statement. “In fact, we have an unparalleled opportunity to attract high-performing technology people so we can handle a greater proportion of our technology needs in-house.”

Bank One, the sixth-largest bank holding company in the United States, employs about 3,500 IT professionals, according to Stan Lata, vice president of media relations, in Chicago.

Beefing up the companys technology staff is part of a move to overhaul its electronic banking systems. (For more information, see bankone.com/ about/careers.)

About half of the 600 new positions will be located in the companys Chicago headquarters. The remainder will be in Columbus, where Bank Ones technology center is located.

Hiring will focus on senior engineer managers to head system software, performance and production efforts; mainframe engineers versed in Virtual Telecommunications Access Method, CICS, IMS and/or MQSeries software who have experience with large-transaction environments and an understanding of high-availability infrastructures; network engineers with experience in administration, operations and/or voice/network applications; and project managers.