Engineering Search Partners had the immense pleasure of attending the Oil & Gas Offshore Technology Conference in Houston last week. The biggest take away from the conference? There is a worker shortage in the oil & gas industry and many firms are looking to hire recruiters to help meet that shortage. This week on our blog, we wanted to share pieces from an article via Fuel Fix that focuses specifically on that need.

Written by LM Sixel, the article Poaching workers becomes business strategy for oil and gas as boomers retire explains that energy companies are aware that they’re facing a shortage of talent as the baby boomer generation begins to retire. Their solution? Steal from their competitors.

According to a survey completed by global consulting leader Mercer, 112 companies worldwide that employ more than 1 million workers indicated their plants to rely on the ability to ‘steal and poach’ to fill their job openings. A few weeks back, John Koob, the leader for the energy consulting practice for North America division of Mercer hosted a roundtable discussion with several oil and gas clients in Denver. Upon the discussion in regards to their plans to fill these key roles once this ‘great shift change’ begins to take place, the representatives from each company clearly stated their intent to steal experts from each other.

Koob explains that there has to be a large shift in the thinking going forward to increase the pool of available workers, and suggests increasing training, relying more on immigrant labor and contractors or making changes to current staffing models.

According to the article, petroleum engineers and plant/operations engineers will be in highest demand over the next five years. Additionally, plant managers, geoscientists, upstream product managers, finance managers, sales, traders and marine shippers will also be in short supply.

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