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Global IT Center Recruits Professionals For Athens Location


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An international information technology company is reaching out to technology professionals from Athens County to work at their new location opening in Athens this month.

Recruiters from CGI Group Inc. flew in from around the nation Wednesday to meet with potential hires at Ohio University's Walter Hall.

“We are looking for people that have an aptitude and interest in IT first and foremost. Part of our job descriptions list business analyst, who are those people that are going to test systems, gather requirements, those types of things. As well as programmer analysts who are going to be our developers, those people who are actually coding our software,” said , Katie Booher, senior manager for CGI Group.

Booher said the company hopes to employ at least 150 people at its East State Street location by 2016.

Representatives from the company said Athens was a great place for CGI to expand because of the quality of the environment, the low cost of living and the high number of professionals with the skills they're looking for in new hires.

“We are always looking to expand our client base, and so if there are companies and services in Athens that are looking to outsource their IT program or look for software solutions, CGI is more than willing to help,” Booher said.

The IT company will offer services such as software development, maintenance, testing and support to clients in Ohio and other parts of the Midwest through its new Athens center.

“One of the things that CGI builds around is our client proximity model, being close to the clients that we serve so that we can better represent them,” Booher said.

Recruiters say they aren’t necessarily looking for candidates with specific computer or technology oriented degrees. The company is open to hiring people with different professional backgrounds.

“Someone who has a degree in English could be a great business analyst because they have attention to detail and for grammatical and doing a lot of reviewing of a lot of information,” said Leslie Illick, a senior analyst at CGI. "Even as far as folks who have a two-year degree from Hocking College, we're definitely interested in looking at their skill sets as well.

CGI has collaborated with JobsOhio, Athens County Economic Development Corporation, the City of Athens, OU and Hocking College to bring its services to the region.

A CGI spokesperson said the company expects to hold several more job fairs in the Athens in the future.