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Volume 6 • Issue 3 • May 2006 |
Printer Friendly Version | Our Perspective |
Finding and waiting for the perfect candidate for a position has gotten a lot harder. And there are pitfalls for waiting too long.
Recently we introduced a very solid geologist to one of our clients. The candidate was perfectly suited for the company's culture and had very relevant experience. One problem: the resume did not clearly state the regional experience the client expected to see. What happened? The geologist had honed his skills in very similar geological environments in another oil and gas region. Upon being asked about the lack of experience on the resume, the hiring manager realized how good of a fit it was and the candidate was eventually invited for an interview.
In another example, one of our clients was looking for a drilling engineer with a specific number of years experience. An excellent candidate had just one year less relevant experience than required. The candidate was almost dropped from the list. A follow up conversation by a persistent placement manager revealed that the candidate had drilled hundreds of wells in a highly active drilling environment, more than making up for the shortage in years.
And the lessons we learned? Think out of the box when you are looking for the perfect candidate. You just might overlook a perfectly good candidate for your position.
We are advising hiring, line, and project managers to work very closely with the recruiting teams to make sure that great candidates don't get dropped from the short list for the wrong reasons. In this very active market, you may not have a chance for a second look at a candidate.
Your Friends at Collarini| Upcoming Events |
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Houston Geological Society 2006 Annual Guest Night
June 17, 2006 Learn about how the international deep sea coring program is collecting samples from the deep ocean all over the world. Featured speaker: Dr. Paul Jeffrey Fox - Director, Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, Texas A&M University. |
| Upstream News |
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Are Career Paths for Technicians too Limited?
Compared to technicians, career paths for engineers and geoscientists have many more options and can resemble climbing a large oak tree with many branches. It's very easy to see where you start but of course hard to predict accurately on which branch you will find yourself when you reach retirement. There are many options and branches to take. With each new branch, knowledge is increased through additional education and training, and experience is gained by taking on new positions and additional responsibilities. But with each choice, especially with each career advancement, there is a risk associated with climbing to the next level.
About this, David Campbell wrote, "Sooner or later, you will realize that the greatest tragedy in life is to have no options, to have no choices. Consequently, when you are planning your future, you should plan it in a way that will give you some choices, and this approach is particularly important if you aren't really sure right now what you want to do."¹
How many branches are on the career tree that most technicians are climbing?
The career paths for technicians are much more limited. In order to entice Generations X and Y to be technicians in our industry, career path options must be clearly documented, communicated, and even expanded. Key factors to successfully recruiting and retaining talented technicians are:
- Exposure to the front edge of technology such as
- unconventional gas recovery
- deepwater projects
- ultra-deep drilling
- seismic acquisition and processing
- Options for specialists and generalists
- Options to international and domestic locations
- Exposure to business and commercial aspects of the industry
- Management career paths
Different companies, producers and service companies, large and small, integrated and independent, can also offer different choices. Your company could entice the brightest of technicians by showing that potential career paths include a decision to get a technical degree. Expanding career paths into areas such as human resources, IT, public relations or community services, and training can give an individual a comfort level that he or she will have choices later in their career.
Companies successfully recruiting and retaining the best technicians will do two things well:
- They will clearly communicate that technicians have a career path with as many options as engineers and geologists and
- They will combine that communication with competency-based training paths by showing how to climb the next branch!
¹David Campbell, PhD, If You Don't Know Where You're Going, You'll Probably End Up Somewhere Else, 1974.
| 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 11,500 experts. Please call our placement managers if you are interested in learning more about these professionals, or check out our website for more candidates.
Senior geoscientist with Master's degree and 11 years of experience in exploration and development with a large independent. Experienced in interpreting 2-D and 3-D data sets in complex structural regimes, including deep marine, deltaic, and lacustrine depositional environments. Also experienced planning and managing 3-D seismic acquisition, processing, and inversion, including vendor selection and supervision. Recently practiced in exploration portfolio management and optimization. Geographic areas worked include south Louisiana, China, Peru, Algeria, and deep water offshore west Africa. Proficient in Landmark, with experience in Geoframe, VoxelGeo, Stratimagic, and various other technical and business software. Ask for GP930.
Independent landman and broker with a Bachelor's degree and more than 30 years of experience with independents and as a consultant. Experienced in resolving business problems with sound approaches based upon careful analysis and research. Practiced in improving corporate profits through systematic approaches and developments. Possesses excellent negotiation skills in all areas of land, including damages, acquisitions, divestitures and joint ventures. Has directed Land activities for the offshore, upper Gulf coast, west Texas, Rocky Mountains, and the western United States including California. Proven in preparation of all land instruments, including assignments, purchase agreements, joint ventures, joint operating agreements, farmins and farmouts. Ask for L542.
Senior geologist with over 20 years of experience in exploration and exploitation with a proven track record of success with a major oil company, small independents, and as a consultant. Effective with multi-task, multi-priority work assignments in both individual and team environments including organizing and implementing activities to obtain desired results. Experienced generating prospects and evaluating properties for acquisition or sale offshore and onshore Louisiana integrating geologic and seismic data. Also experienced in planning 3-D seismic shooting and drilling programs in mature areas to target bypassed reserves. Geographic areas worked include south Louisiana, Arkansas, the OCS, the Texas Gulf coast, and the Rocky Mountains. Computer proficiency in SMT Kingdom and Landmark as well as other business and technical software. Ask for G1478.
Reservoir/petroleum engineer with 30 years of experience with a major oil company. Skilled in compositional reservoir simulation, reservoir characterization, log analysis, rock and fluid property evaluation and emerging property evaluation. Experienced with depositional geology, mechanics of reservoir mapping, and design and maintenance of secondary recovery (waterflood and gas flood) projects and EOR (polymer flood) projects. Developed and taught in-house training classes for 'Advanced Reservoir Mapping for Engineers.' Highly skilled in using emerging high tech reservoir applications such as Roxar's Reservoir Modeling System (RMS) and Landmark's VIP/Falcon reservoir simulators. Ask for R0776.
Petroleum engineer with 24 years of experience in managing field operations. Highly skilled at the management of contract engineering consultation services dealing with facility construction oversight, start-up and operations, natural gas marketing, facility environmental permitting and environmental compliance monitoring. Provided engineering and management services of a hydrogen sulfide removal/ recovery plant during construction, start-up and operation. Experienced at pipeline construction and operations. Highly motivated to move to Houston, TX. Ask for P413.
Registered process-facility engineer with a Bachelor's degree and over 25 years experience with engineering, procurement and construction companies in design, construction, operations and management of upstream oil and gas projects. Project experience includes domestic and international onshore and offshore production facilities, MOPU, FPO, drillship, semi-submersible, some FPSO, FEEDs, detailed design, process simulations, PFDs, P&IDs, tie-ins, fabrication and installation. Geographic area worked include offshore GOM, onshore Texas and Louisiana, Alaska, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico and West Africa. Computer skills include HYSIM, ChemCad, Dwight's, SAM, WEM, MS Office, dbase and Freelance Graphics. Ask for F0004.
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Review thousands of talented people in more than 30 upstream disciplines at |
| Upstream Careers |
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Ending the Career Bypass
Today, the demand for talent is greater than it has been in 25 years, and our resources are seriously limited. Whether you have been in academia, in a completely different technical field, or a stay-at-home parent, the opportunity will never be better than now to come back after leaving the industry. But, it is important to present your talents well. Recruiters for the larger companies receive thousands of resumes each week, and they, too, are short of personnel. They often control the flow of resumes to the hiring managers. Your resume is your only chance to make a first impression, so make it count! Here is not the place to be humble. It is your chance to attract attention and obtain the interview. Your resume must convey to a recruiter why your qualifications fit the needs of the company, even if your talents are not an exact match for any of their job descriptions. If it is formatted cleanly and worded clearly, there is a much better chance of it being read right away. Here is a format we find easiest to understand.
Begin with a summary describing what you do and want to do. Be concise explaining your strengths and what you will contribute. Don't waste words saying "obtain a position where I can achieve professional advancement." Everyone wants that! Instead, say, "Interpreting geophysicist with 22 years of experience and a 75% success track record in south Texas." If you know what a particular company is looking for, change this paragraph to highlight that aspect of your career. Explain clearly how you have kept up with changing technology, including taking courses, etc. If you can be flexible, including work on a contract basis, state that up front. Some companies are attracted to being able to audition before hiring.
Include your education, and explain your work history honestly, including years for each. Less than that appears to be deceptive. But, if you worked as a bartender for 4 months, it is probably okay to leave that out. For each position you cite, give specific examples of how your experience is relevant or can be of value. Briefly describe how you accomplished the objectives. Instead of writing. "I worked over 25 wells in the Tomball Field," write, "I increased production by 1,000 BOPD by using a combination of nodal analysis and de-bottlenecking." In every case, document your results. In the examples of work history that are not directly hands-on in our industry, explain how that experience is of value, even if it is volunteer work.
It is okay to use multiple pages to do this. It is also okay to add associations and honors, though listing the complete bibliography of 50 technical papers is a bit much.
Finally, be patient. We as an industry are still figuring out how to work the resource problem. Recovering our lost professional resources to use them effectively now requires a mindset change that is still in its early stages. Good luck!
| About Us |
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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):
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Accountants and supporting personnel Administrative assistants Business analysts Civil engineers Clerks Database administrators Drilling engineers Drilling operations supervisors Electrical/Instrument engineers Geologists Geophysicists Health, safety and environmental personnel Landmen and supporting personnel Management personnel Material/Corrosion engineers |
Naval architects Operations supervisors Petrophysicists Process engineers Procurement personnel Production/Completion engineers Production operations supervisors Project managers Reservoir engineers Subsea engineers Surface/Topsides engineers Technical writers Technicians, drafting and graphic Technicians, engineering Technicians, geoscience |
Reservoir Solutions the Industry Trusts...
The Collarini Associates petroleum engineers and geoscientists specialize in evaluating oil and gas reservoirs. Specific projects include integrated field studies, acquisition evaluations, independent reserve appraisals, and exploration and exploitation prospect generation and assessment. Our full divestment services include creation and hosting of electronic and physical data rooms in addition to the technical evaluation. Our teams in Houston and New Orleans are very experienced and stand ready to help you on projects of any size. Try us!
Guiding Careers to the Next Level...
Collarini Career Management applies its deep understanding of the oil and gas industry and expertise in career issues to help oil and gas 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 |
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11111 Richmond Avenue, Suite 126 Houston, Texas 77082 832.251.0553 |
4200 South I-10 Service Road, Suite 230 Metairie, Louisiana 70001 504.887.7127 |
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