Nine years ago, Denise Stephens worked for aviation behemoth Boeing, at one of its divisions in St. Louis, a city that consistently tops the list for having one of the highest crime rates in the country. She often wondered if there was a better spot to raise her family. Then the Washington Savannah River Co., a $300 million firm that manages a nuclear materials site for the U.S. Department of Energy, convinced her that Aiken, S.C., beat St. Louis by a country mile. “I got recruited to come down here, and they toured me around,” says Stephens, now the company’s CIO. “I love horses, so they showed me all the farms and hooked me up with a real estate agent who specializes in equestrian properties. There wasn’t any traffic, and it was a better place to raise my kids. That’s how they got me here, and now, when I’m trying to recruit others, I do so in turn.”

But for Stephens and her mid-market peers who are located outside traditional IT talent hotbeds, luring recruits takes creative work and planning—especially for lower-level jobs where companies can’t roll out the red carpet like they do for potential C-level candidates.

Just ask Jeff Roggensack, VP of IS and technology for Alere Medical, a $65 million company that implements remote patient monitoring systems, based in Reno, Nev.—a town known more for its gambling and legalized prostitution than for cultivating hotshot programmers. When he served as CIO for United HealthCare of Illinois (based in Chicago) and later RehabCare Group in St. Louis, he never had to search high and low for talent. “There were people to be had,” he says. But once he joined Alere in late 2004, he had to prioritize recruiting work with local area colleges and reach out to people who had tired of the nearby San Francisco area.

Despite the hurdles, Stephens and Roggensack have built strong IT departments. Better still, they’ve implemented measures to ensure that once they have the people they want, they can prevent them from being seduced by the sexiness of cities like Boston and San Francisco and the big-money firms found there. Here’s a look at what’s working now for CIOs in Idaho, North Dakota and places in between.

Make Smart College Connections
Though it’s tempting to try to pluck talent away from the big guys, mid-market IT departments find it more effective to keep a steady dialogue with local universities, and encourage new grads to stay in the area. This takes more than just the proverbial job posting or phone call to the college counseling office.