Joe Beery has big plans for 2008, having spent the past 25 months integrating US Airways and America West Airlines as the combined company's senior vice president and CIO. (The two carriers announced merger plans in 2005.) With the integration in his rearview mirror, Beery is now ready to implement new systems, modernize old systems and work on customer service initiatives.

"It's a very exciting year for us," he says. "We're growing. Our IT group has more than doubled in size, and we still have a major push to do a lot of hiring right now."

Specifically, he plans to hire approximately 150 people this year. So it's a good thing he knows exactly what he wants in an IT professional, whether a help desk employee or a managing director. The self-proclaimed "blue collar CIO" seeks candidates who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty, are versatile and capable of learning new skills, and aren't fazed by a dynamic, high-profile industry.

"The airline industry is always in the media," he says. "If our computers are not working, then nothing works. You can't launch airplanes, take reservations or service customers. Combine that with an industry where you're fighting every day with competitors, the weather, etc., and it's a tough business to work in."

In this Q&A, Beery explains how partnering with local staffing firms helped him get through the merger and how he picks candidates who can take the heat of a jet engine. He discusses the importance of developing professional relationships with the college graduates he hires to encourage their loyalty. And he shares his biggest hiring mistake: letting a staffing challenge override his gut in a hiring decision.

When you're integrating two companies, do you hire during that time, or do you wait to do your hiring until everything is done?

Let me give you a little background. US Airways, in the 1997-1998 time frame, outsourced 100 percent of its IT group to Sabre and ultimately those employees were merged into EDS. [Editor's note: EDS has provided IT services to Sabre since 2001.] When we embarked on the merger, all of the IT personnel on the US Airways side were EDS employees. America West, by contrast, had a very small contract with EDS. Most of its IT resources were in-house. When we put the two IT organizations together, I really only had the America West team because all of the other personnel were EDS employees. Our strategy moving forward was to insource a lot of the systems and people who supported the old US Airways system. Also, in many cases, we grew the America West systems, which is interesting because typically in a merger, you would inherit the big airline's systems, not the little airline's. The logic behind that decision was that the America West systems were lightweight systems. We owned a lot of the intellectual property for those systems, and we managed them very economically. After the two IT groups and systems were combined, we saved about $100 million. The combined IT organization runs about $100 million cheaper than the two organizations did on their own.