Cathy Mickelson, an editor at High Technology Careers, a magazine in Santa Clara, Calif., said the market continues to be robust for engineers, even if the last year has seen a slight downturn.

"We had a huge surge in high-tech recruitment in 1995, 1996 and 1997, and we've been coming back down since then." However, she said, "we're still way above our expected levels."

Mickelson's group is part of Westech, which puts on some 90 job fairs a year, 10 of which are held in Silicon Valley. "We get between 300 and 400 companies at each one" and an average of about 10,000 job seekers during each of the two-day events.

The fairs are a murderers row of high-tech heavyweights, with the likes of Intel, 3Com, Sun Microsystems and Cisco leading the way. Lately, hot sectors include information systems, programming and anything to do with software and the Internet. Consumer-electronics gear, like personal digital assistants, have improved the picture for that segment of the market, though experts say it's still stalled.

Other companies with interests in Silicon Valley — the fertile crescent that has made the stretch between San Francisco and San Jose one of the world's most vibrant and productive corridors — are trawling for engineering talent, too. Banking, insurance and airline companies took up 14 percent of the slots at last month's Silicon Valley Westech job fair, held at the Santa Clara County Convention Center. That's as many as defense and aerospace combined.

Mickelson said the job-fair business does face a new threat: online recruiting. "I think that clients are changing their media mix. They have more options on where they want to spend their money." So with companies taking to the Web in droves, and using their home pages and human-resource links, she said, job seekers need to be thinking electronically, too.

If there's any doubt about the Internet's importance in a Silicon Valley job search, just check out the San Jose Mercury News. Just before New Year's Eve, the paper boasted more than 600 jobs under the title of engineer. Many were in software fields, but many, too, were in nuts and bolts high tech.

For specific jobs, check out the CareerMosaic job site by executing a search for "engineer" and "San Jose." You'll come up with 104 jobs, and these are for those companies located in San Jose itself. Even more jobs are available if you type in nearby "Santa Clara" or "Palo Alto." These jobs were posted as of Dec. 11.

A sampling of the San Jose jobs includes a hardware-emulation engineer for 3Dfx Interactive Inc., a developer of 3-D graphic accelerators. 3Dfx is requesting an MSEE or CS with two years of experience, preferably with the Quickturn systems, and a programming background in Perl and C.

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has several dozen engineering jobs open, including ones for device engineer, process engineer and software positions.

The semiconductor sector was 1998's most disappointing employer, as over 40,000 positions were eliminated, but the Semiconductor Industry Association is predicting a rebound in worldwide IC sales for 1999, which is good news for the heartland of semiconductor technology.

Also active in San Jose is Altera Corp., with more than 18 engineering openings, including several in software engineering, one in design engineering and one for a senior device engineer.

Details are available at CareerMosaic job site.

— Additional reporting by Bob Bellinger