During the past few days several people have approached us wondering why we=  are continuing to do college recruiting and continuing with the floor buil= d out given the state of the company today.
We appreciate people's concern= s about adding people and spending money at a time when we ought to be redu= cing unnecessary expenses.
Let us begin by saying that we share these conc= erns and are not hiring people or undertaking significant capital expenditu= res without a great deal of thought.
We would also encourage people to tal= k to their manager or either of us if you don't understand why we are doing=  certain things.
In short, we have decided to continue with the college re= cruiting, although we have not yet decided how many, if any, we will hire.
=  We have decided to delay the beginning of the floor build out for a couple=  of weeks.
Why Are We Continuing With College Recruiting?
During the last few years we have made tremendous progress establishing a p= resence for Enron broadly and the Portland office specifically with leading=  schools in the northwest.
This past year we finally reached critical mass=  and had tremendous success in our recruiting efforts.
Although we are unc= ertain about our hiring needs this year, we feel that it is in our best lon= g term interest to continue having a presence with the schools in the north= west.
We have already made presentations and done initial screenings at mo= st schools.
We have identified the best people from each school and have a= lready made plans for them to come to our office for two super Saturdays.
= The cost to us to finish this process is not large compared to the benefit = that we gain from honoring our commitment to the schools and students as pa= rticipants in their on-campus recruiting programs.
We also realize that it=  is a hard year to be coming out of school looking for a job.
It is our be= lief that students would rather interview with us even if the possibilities=  of employment may be somewhat diminished.
Finally, we would like to empha= size the point that we have not yet committed to hiring anybody.
We will i= nterview people, identify the best candidates, and make hiring decisions ba= sed on the needs of the office.
Before extending offers we will consider t= he potential impact that it could have on people in this office and Enron e= mployees in other offices who have been redeployed.
Stated another way, we=  don't intend to hire a bunch of new people if there are people within Enro= n who could fill positions or if it would put the jobs of the people alread= y here at risk.
We may end up postponing hiring decisions until we are mor= e certain about the state of affairs in the company.
How Will the Floor Move Play Out?
We have decided to postpone the floor build out for a few weeks.
While we = still think that it makes sense for the office, we have decided to pause fo= r a couple of weeks before we start to spend significant amounts of money o= n this.
When talking to the build out team today it became clear that dela= ying would accomplish several goals.
First, it allows us to get final arch= itectural plans in place and firm quotes from contractors so that we can mo= re precisely peg down the costs before moving forward.
Second, it gives th= e build out team breathing room to iron out more of the details of the move= .
Finally, it buys us a little more time to decide whether or not it makes=  sense to do this project given the state of affairs of the company right n= ow.
While we still think that we are going to move forward with this proje= ct, it seems like buying a couple of weeks of time is the right thing to do=  right now.
In about two weeks we will reconvene with the build out team w= ith firm budget numbers and make a decision to either move ahead, cancel, o= r delay again.
=20  As always, we will try to keep people updated on things as soon as new, rel= iable information becomes available.
We recognize that this is a very hard=  time for everyone.
Please try to stay focused on the job at hand and keep=  up the success of this office.
Tim Belden and Chris Calger

Recruiting and Floor Buildout
