Dick LeFave and John Doucette see value where few CIOs are even bothering to look these days: entry-level IT staff. Nextel’s LeFave and United Technologies Corp.’s Doucette have recently instituted IT entry-level recruiting and training programs at their companies.

To figure out why they do, go back and take a look at their first IT jobs. Both received formal and informal mentoring and training during their formative years. LeFave got his start at Boeing, learning the craft from well-trained engineers willing to share their knowledge. "Boeing provided a mentoring process and many opportunities to learn from engineers with 30 years of experience," LeFave says. "That’s where you really learned."

Doucette’s early IT experiences in General Electric’s information management program "gave me a great technical foundation to build from," he recalls. He explored the various departments of one of GE’s business units during an intensive two-year IT training program.

So it’s not surprising to hear the two sermonize about the philosophical and societal importance of giving the next generation of IT newbies a helping hand. United Technologies Corp. (UTC) immerses new IT staffers in a whopping 27 months of work in UTC’s seven operating units. Nextel offers six weeks of IT and business schooling and mentoring within its departments.

These kinds of training programs are increasingly rare in this age of outsourcing and cost control, in which many CIOs see no future in developing the next generation of IT leaders. According to our "State of the CIO" research, CIOs rate staff development dead last in terms of effectiveness and, consequently, in how often they offer entry-level training programs.

Yet three CIOs in three very different industries—LeFave, Doucette and Steve Jasinski of O’Reilly Auto Parts, a midmarket automobile parts distributor and retailer—see value in IT entry-level recruiting and training. These CIOs are fully aware that the benefits will not show up immediately on the bottom line. But they say that the money spent on these programs will help develop new staffers faster and give them a deeper business skill set, as well as elicit company loyalty.

Before we bestow a corporate humanitarian award to these CIOs for their service to recent college grads, however, it should be noted that LeFave and Doucette are among the many CIOs who outsource a ton of IT entry-level jobs. "I’m not trying to portray myself as Mother Teresa," says LeFave, who has billion-dollar outsourcing deals for billing, customer care, data center and help desk operations, but "we do have a degree of social responsibility in all this."