In a press conference early last week in the Carbon Neutral Energy Solutions Laboratory, General Motors (GM) announced the upcoming opening of a new Information Technology (IT) Innovation Center in Roswell, Ga.
“Recently, GM selected GT as one of only five strategic university partners for the global company,” said GM University Relations Team Coordinator for Georgia Tech Chris Boehle. “The newest IT center announcement was hosted at Georgia Tech to further demonstrate GM’s partnership with the university and ongoing high tech job recruiting.”
According to Boehle, this will provide new job opportunities for students across various majors.
“Many of GM’s 1,000 new hires in Georgia will be recruited from Georgia Tech’s highly ranked ECE and CoC programs,” Boehle said. “Students interested in applying can post through Career Buzz, posting 54212 [or] visit the CoC Career Fair January 30th.”
“Locating this center in Atlanta makes good business sense,” said GM Chief Information Officer Randy Mott in a press release by GM. “We can draw from a deep pool of high tech expertise through the surrounding colleges, universities and talent residing in the area.”
“For more than half a century, Georgia Tech and GM have partnered in everything from research projects to student innovation competitions,” said Institute President G.P. “Bud” Peterson. “We look forward to even greater collaborations, as well as exciting career opportunities for University System graduates at GM’s newest innovation center here in metro Atlanta.”
However, according to the Director of GM Communications, other schools are also being targeted for potential employees at this center.
“We will be looking for talented contributors who have been trained at top computer science schools…[including] Georgia Institute of Technology, UNC Chapel Hill, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Clemson, Duke, Florida State…Georgia State University…, University of Georgia… and University of South Florida,” Huston-Rough said.
According to the press release by GM, the $26 million facility will house professional workers who will be responsible for performing IT related projects for GM that normally gets outsourced to other contractors. The deal to open this center was also driven by the various state incentive funds, including $17.5 million in employment-based tax credits, as reported by the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
“This is an IT Innovation Center, in which we’ll be developing productivity tools and new capabilities for our business customers in product development, manufacturing, sales, service and supply chain, among many others,” Huston-Rough said. “The center is close to being operational right now. We will start interviewing and hiring immediately for GM IT jobs in Roswell. Interested candidates can visit: careers [at] gm.com/itjobs.”
Gov. Nathan Deal, also at the press conference, acknowledged the economic benefit for Georgia with this business endeavor.
“I think Georgia is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the rebound and that’s what we’ve been trying to do, is to lay the foundation so that when the economy recovers as it appears it may now be doing that we are a place that people will look to for new job opportunities and for expanding existing businesses that are already here,” Deal said, according to an interview by CBS Atlanta.