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Volume 15 • Issue 1 • January 2015 |
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Our Perspective | |
Happy New Year!
The beginning of a new work year holds promises and the challenge of uncertainties to come. These uncertainties are recognized by experts in work related psychology as one of the major sources of stress on your employees. Stress, in all its incarnations, is now commonly known as one of the more dominant reasons why employees quit. In a tight labor market, and with technical and business challenges ahead, no company can afford to lose its employees over stress if it is avoidable. Here are a few pointers about how to recognize, and what to do, if your employee(s) are experiencing stress at work.
It has become an annual tradition to revisit the resume writing process and the problem areas we still see in our daily business. Here are some refreshers for you. Believe us when we say that this subject is here to stay. Looks like many otherwise accomplished professionals tend to put less emphasis on their resumes - a tool meant to leave a lasting, good first impression.
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| Employer Tips |
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Avoiding the kind of stress that drives your employees away
The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) issued a report a few years ago that stated that close to 80% of the American workforce experiences stress to a level that would require outside help to avoid major health risks. The World Health Organization (WHO) surveyed that stress at work is one of the major health issues in the United States costing US companies in excess of $300 billion every year - a combination of insurance costs and the costs of recruiting new employees for departing stressed out staff members.
No surprise therefore, stress is also mentioned as one of the biggest reasons why people chose to leave employment to seek better options. While some factors of stress are personally related and out of an employer's control, many stress drivers could be avoided by management paying attention and employing common sense practices to minimize the frustration that causes stress-related symptoms.
Here are some thoughts on the matter that might help you in your organization.
Communication
Martin Luther King Jr. said this about people:
"People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they have not communicated with each other."
If an employer and employee accustomed to being able to communicate freely find that communication has broken down, some stress factors might be at work and must be addressed. Managers should watch for the situation. Has the employee's position changed to negatively affect professional, personal and/or family responsibilities and leisure, or is not receiving adequate compensation? Does he or she feel he is not receiving an appropriate level of respect and dignity and recognition around colleagues and subordinates? Does the employee feel legitimate concerns cannot be discussed due to fear of losing his job?
Lack of Job Security
The feeling by an employee that his or her job is at stake, whether perceived correctly or incorrectly, makes up a large component of stress at work. If an individual perceives insecurity about the future, this uncertainty will lead to undue pressures and inevitably to the employee looking for and finding another opportunity. This can be avoided by communicating to all your staff, in as directly and honest a way possible, about the company's standing. Simmering uncertainty and holding back information is a sure-fire way to lose your employee. Talk.
People Issues
This is the challenge at work. Unattended to, a group of people not getting along with each other will also lead to stress and to employees leaving. As an employer, you have the obligation to provide opportunities for social interaction among your employees. The establishment of a zero-tolerance policy for harassment is a must. Even subtle and passive bullying at work is destructive and stress-inducing and possibly illegal. Make sure that your managers' actions are consistent with organizational values in this respect.
Workload
People experience stress when they perceive that the demands of their work are greater than their abilities to cope. Coping means balancing the demands and pressures (job requirements) with resources, skills, and knowledge (capabilities). For example, if given a tight deadline on a project, an employee may feel he has neither adequate time, tools and training, or ability to deliver a product well. The demands may bring about feelings of undue pressure that could result in work related stress both for the employer and employee. Consider the analogy of pushing a beach ball under water; eventually it will pop out of the water having wearied both the pusher (manager) and the beach ball (employee), with no result other than wasted effort.
Stress can also result from having too few demands, as people will become bored, feel undervalued and lack recognition. If they feel they have little or no say over the work they do or how they do it, this may cause them stress.
Juggling Work and Personal Lives
All of us have to juggle work and life in different ways. The trouble begins when the balance can no longer be kept because of illness of an employee or when the issues an employee has to balance become overwhelming and generally unrealistic for anybody to handle. Here is where employers should particularly pay attention to early warning signs that an employee is unhappy - irritability, fatigue, physical or medical complaints, and mood changes. If this remains unattended, the employee's departure is just a matter of time. This is not easy because every member of an organization has his own mandates and expectations to manage. Nevertheless, balance needs to happen, and in many organizations it can if the effort is made. Employers can take proactive steps to reduce stress levels in their employees by offering employee assistance programs, more flexible scheduling, maternity and paternity leave, and providing better training for management. Balancing life and work is a skill and this skill can be learned.
No person is perfect, and no organization's members do everything well all the time. But not ignoring signs of stress will lead to happier employees and to a higher retention rate.
| Talent Pool |
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The
following biographies are just a small sampling of the kind of talent
available in our talent pool of over 21,000 experts. Please call
our placement managers if you are interested in learning more about
these professionals, or check out our website for more candidates.
Engineering Technician with six years of experience working for a large operator. Experienced in data management, quality control, spreadsheet creation and maintenance, database maintenance, production plotting, scorecard creation, presentation creation, data upload, graph creation, data research, and file maintenance. Geographic areas worked include Texas. Software experience in Peep, OFM, Spotfire, MS Frontpage, and Access. Ask for TE609.
Geoscience Technician with 11 years of oil and gas industry experience working for small independents. Experienced in providing technical support for geology, geophysics, land, and engineering across all discipline levels including generating maps and cross sections, loading seismic data, printing and scanning geological data, well logs, maps, cross sections, reports, and studies; searching and locating wells, ordering core samples, and maintaining databases. Software proficiency in SMT Kingdom, DrillingInfo, NeuraScanner, NeuraLaser/Viewer, MAS2000, Geoatlas, XSection, IHS Enerdeq, WellBase, DI Desktop, Global Mapper, ScanWorks/Colortrac, Query Builder, Lexco, and AFE Navigator. Geographic areas worked include the Permian Basin. Ask for TG884.
Petroleum Engineer with a bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering and approximately one year of experience working for an independent energy company. Experienced in reserves analysis, offset studies, completions, polymer floods, AFE writing, rod design, water floods, recompletions, decline curve analysis, cross section creation, and economic analysis. Geographic areas worked include Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Software experience in ARIES, SROD, SMT Kingdom, CMG, IHS, Enerdeq, and GeoGraphix. Ask for TE606.
Petroleum Engineer with a bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering and two years of experience in the oil and gas industry working for a software support company and an engineering services company. Experienced in providing drilling software support and training including providing real-time drilling software support, providing daily technical support to all real-time systems to ensure continuous and reliable data availability, managing requests for all systems and resolving issues, training customers and users, and monitoring real-time data streams. Additionally experienced as a drill log analyst conducting quality control on rig data, deploying and installing rig hardware, supervising and monitoring drilling and log measurements data, creating well reports, updating field reports, and analyzing and performing case studies for rig deviations. Software proficiency in MaraDrill, WellView, and ProAct. Language fluency in Spanish. Ask for D562.
Petroleum Engineer with a bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering, a bachelor's degree in geological engineering, and 26 years of experience working for small and large operators and as a consultant. Experienced in designing, preparing, and implementing procedures for well completions, workovers, re-entries, fracs, and acid ball outs; reviewing and monitoring costs and progress, creating flowback and stimulation spreadsheets, and assessing the effectiveness of operations. Additionally experienced in directing, supervising and managing projects and operations, developing AFE budget recommendations for capital outlay, services, equipment and materials for individual wells and projects; preparing detailed economics, preparing bids and proposals for the acquisition of equipment and services, preparing SPCC plans, maintaining vendor relations, and tracking expenditures. Geographic areas worked include New Mexico, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Michigan. Software proficiency in ARIES and OGRE. Ask for PR322.
Production Engineer with a bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering and 22 years of experience working for a service company and mid-sized operators. Experienced in completions, recompletions, production, and workover operations including horizontal completions, coiled tubing, multi-stage fracturing, acid stimulations, and gas lift diagnostics. Geographic areas worked include south Texas, Louisiana, North Dakota, and the Gulf of Mexico OCS. Ask for P663.
Landman with a bachelor's degree in management and administration and more than 30 years of experience working for a major oil and gas company, several independent companies, and as a consultant. Experienced in contract negotiation, employee training, lease acquisition, crew management, formulation and administration of oil and gas leases, title curative work, farmouts and farmins, participation agreements, joint venture agreements, and joint operating agreements. Geographic areas worked include onshore Gulf coast, the Gulf of Mexico shelf, North Dakota, Ohio, and California. Certified Professional Landman. Ask for L492.
Project Engineer and Manager with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering technology and nine years of experience in oil and gas. Experienced in platform removal and installation, compressor lifts, rig salvage, well cutting, plug and abandonment, hot tapping, saturation diving, jetting, and subsea chemical injection. Additionally experienced in creating wellbore diagrams, writing P&A procedures, performing cost tracking, calculating structural weights and sling loads, drafting P&IDs, and preparing bids. Certified Engineer-in-Training by the State of Texas. Possesses current Safegulf, HUET, Water Survival, and TWIC certifications. Ask for F1883.
HSE Advisor with a master's degree in environmental analysis and decision making and seven years of experience working for two major operators. Experienced in developing project documents, coordinating HSE and regulatory requirements, managing the contracting process for public bidding, managing safety meetings and training compliance, reporting safety metrics, and participating in project compliance and regulatory compliance assessments. Additionally experienced in providing geoscience support including creating well log databases, preparing geoscience data for interpretation, developing petrophysical reports, and importing data into various geoscience software. Geographic areas worked include Angola, Nigeria, and the Gulf of Mexico. Ask for HS987.
Reservoir Engineer with a bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering and 10 years of experience working for a major operator, several independent companies. Experienced in creating type-curves, implementing reservoir management strategies, characterizing reservoirs, analyzing risk, creating production and capital forecasts, performing supervisory duties, asset development planning, and acquisition analysis. Geographic areas worked include Texas, California, southern Oklahoma, and the Gulf of Mexico. Software proficiency in ARIES, PHDWin, FDR, SpotFire, FieldVision, WellCore, CSBeam, Dl-Desktop, PVTsim, GIS, FieldDIRECT, SmartView, Visual Explore, Hyperion, and AutoCAD. Ask for R1137.
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Review thousands of talented people in
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| Career Advice |
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The Importance of Your Resume (Redux)
A well-written resume is important, and there are a lot of tools on the internet that can help you. But we thought we would focus on the most important points to you and specific mistakes we see in our practice. These are in no particular order; they are all important, and any one of them might cause your resume to be placed in the "No" box.
Your Photo
This is still popular in some parts of the world, but on the way out; don't do it. If you still have your photograph in your resume, then remove it now.
Graphics and Fancy Fonts
Keep it simple and readable with generally accepted fonts. If you wish to emphasize, it is okay to use italics, bolding or underlining in moderation. Highlighting too many items dilutes the impact of highlighting, don't you agree?
E-Mail Address
Make sure you have a professionally sounding email address that includes portions of your name. The old addresses that were funny in college have to go now. An anecdotal statistic indicates that in 2000, approximately 20% of resumes were transmitted via email. That number has grown to over 90% in 2014. Here are some key aspects to consider when the offer just doesn't seem to come in.
Length of Resume
A resume should not be longer than three pages! Technical project accomplishments and publications need to be moved to a separate document to keep the resume focused. Check the style of your resume: Do you see a lot of "I did this?"-type language that can be removed which helps shorten the resume?
Grammar, Style and Overall Neatness
Sigh! Unfortunately we sometimes see poorly written resumes from very accomplished professionals. If you are unsure, have someone double-check your resume, but there is simply no excuse for grammatical errors. Look for the correct spelling of the software you list in your resume, and be consistent in capitalization! A resume that capitalizes every other word looks unprofessional and is hard to read - two things that will get it tossed.
Your resume should look pleasing to the reader's eyes. Watch out for improper indentations and too many spaces which can give your resume an "out-of-balance" appearance. Do you know that of 500 test resumes we found the words "led" and "principal" were misspelled 25% of the time?
Missing or Vague Objective and Profile
A strong start in your resume makes for a good first impression. Under the first header called Objective, start with a few words or a very short sentence about your objective, i.e. Senior Subsea Engineering, Business Development, or Oil and Gas Accounting.
Following the Objective, should be a short profile or summary about you. Do not be vague, fuzzy or too general - words like self-motivating, excellent communicator and such are commonplace - but these are traits that are expected of you! This section of the resume tells your future employer what you can bring to the table. Make sure you define the one or two areas where you are a true expert - not more, because that dilutes the idea of expert. List things you are capable of doing or which you have done as experience.
Bulleting
Among readers of many resumes the preference is clearly towards intelligent bulleting - it is easier to read and follow than a longer, full-sentenced paragraph and narrative. This will also reduce the overall size of your resume.
Listing Work Experience 15 Years or Older
Practically all readers of your resume are interested in your most recent job experience. Detailed job experience older than 15 years tends to clutter your resume and should therefore be grouped together at the end of your resume under a heading such as "Prior Experience". Use very concise language to describe your accomplishments - Lo and behold, here is another way to shorten your resume. But, don't forget that people want to know how long you have been in industry, so don't eliminate those dates.
Last Reminder - Applicant Tracking Software Are Here To Stay
Practically all companies now utilize software that scans for keywords. It is a fact that in order for you to get noticed you have to use the correct, precise, and most commonly used technical terms in your area of expertise. Again, fluff words don't count and they only lengthen your resume unnecessarily. These points should give you a fresh start for the year as you're pursuing your next career move.
Let us know if you have any questions and good luck!
| About Us | |
Connecting
the Industry's Experts...
Collarini
Energy Staffing Inc. is a full-service agency specializing
in the placement of energy and EPC personnel and including the disciplines
listed below (other supporting personnel are managed upon request):
| Accounting and finance
personnel Administrative and clerical personnel Business analysts Civil and architectural engineers Data Management Drilling engineers Drilling operations supervisors Energy trading professionals Executives Facilities engineers Geologists, geophysicists, and petrophysicists Health, safety, and environmental personnel Human resources personnel Instrument and electrical engineers IT professionals Land, legal, and supporting personnel Marine engineers and naval architects |
Materials and corrosion engineers |
Guiding
Careers to the Next Level...
Collarini
Career Management applies
its deep understanding of the career paths of technical professionals in
the E&P and EPC communities to help companies and professionals build
successful organizations and careers. We leverage Collarini's unique
combination of industry knowledge and technical expertise to guide
companies and individuals during transition, training existing employees
for high performance, and designing customized technical training plans
for companies and individuals.
Contact
Us
10497 Town and Country Way,
Suite 950
Houston,
Texas 77024
832.251.0553
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