Defense Audits Create Jobs . . .

The stepped-up government audits of defense contractors that have followed the well-publicized problems at General Dynamics, General Electric and Hughes Aircraft have sharply hiked industry demand for executives and managers, said William T. Mangum, president of Thomas Mangum Co., a Los Angeles-based executive search firm.

In particular, military and defense companies across the country have been looking for executive and management-level personnel in operations, product assurance, quality assurance, finance and government contracts, Mangum said.

In the last few months, the company has had more requests for such talent, especially for operations and quality-assurance people, than in the last two years, Mangum said.

“There’s just no question about it from the many companies that we deal with that they’ve been audited much more carefully in the last nine months to a year than they were in previous years,” Mangum said. “Companies are just taking a much more careful look at the bottom-line results of cost and quality.”

About two-thirds of the search requests are for people to replace existing personnel, with the rest being hired to increase strength in a particular area, he said. Such executives and managers “are hard to come by because all of a sudden everyone is in the same boat.”