job testing

[HAVEAJOB <HAVEAJOB@xxxxxxx>]

A little help, if I may be so humble to ask (read BEG!!!!)...

I have a client company of mine that needs to hire several new
developers/programmers/analysts.  

Several factors:  they are a fairly large shop, they are in a very low cost of
living area, their salaries are MUCH lower than average, their area is hard to
recruit people into, they have salary equity concerns within their shop, they
are a consortium essentially not for profit so new budget dollars every year
are hard to come by, etc.  the bottom line is that they are losing people
through attrition and losses to other companies.  They recognize their
problems but just can't seem to get thier salaries up to par fast enough,
mainly due to the conservative nature of their business and the very upper
level management's failure to address this issue in times past.

To combat the problem, they have decided that hiring new graduates and getting
them ingrained into their community seems to be the best way to go.  They have
a virtual monopoly on their business and do not anticipate serious market
share problems to arise from the training lag (even though they are working
50+ hour weeks now and are severely understaffed).  The concern is more from a
service issue to their clients than a loss of business.  They will be hiring
both BS and AS candidates with backgorunds in MIS and Computer Science.

That's where I come in; the HR department has asked me to help them with
salary expectations and additional information.  While I see what my other
client companies often hire new graduate for, I'd appreciate any feedback. My
questions:

1.  What is a reasonable starting salary for new graduates with no experience?
They will hire both BS and AS candidates.  Target area is the South Central
US.  Positions will include a variety of skills and platforms; they use an
AS/400, C/S UNIX box, and VSE mainframe in their applications.  Languages will
primarily be COBOL/COBOL400/Microfocus COBOL but there will be some Visual
Basic and PC development.

2.  I'm sure there are services that provide fundamental skills level testing.
I know of only one or two companies.  Can anyone point me in the right
direction, either URL. address, or phone number of companies that will test
specific computer programming knowledge skills?

TIA, 

Dave Brown
800-239-1410 x2205
haveajob@aol.com -or- haveajob@airnet.net

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