When it comes to recruitment strategies, change is in the air to replace traditional approaches that leave too much to chance. Consider today’s shifting environment. Of the Big Crew Change’s varied aspects, a major contributing factor has been severe oil price drops. Not only have these caused companies to slash their workforces, typically older workers at the higher-paid end of the scale, but these actions also have effectively removed not just their salaries but virtually a generation of invaluable oil and gas experience.

Compounding the need to replace these losses when oil prices predictably rise in each cycle is the reality of attempting to remain an industry or profession of choice when the new generation selects its course of study in college. The oil industry discovered years ago the importance of keeping technical professions an attractive option for the “best and brightest” who can easily opt for other vertical industries that do not have the volatility of the oil and gas industry.

Big Crew Change numbers are sobering. Some projections suggest the industry will lose up to 50% of its workforce over the next five years and up to 80% by 2018. Meanwhile, the biggest crop of petroleum engineering graduates in the last couple of decades has emerged, bringing fresh, leading-edge education but no experience.

Companies should heed admonitions about scaling back graduate recruiting. Time and again, that decision has led to a permanent loss of new talent and has caused potential petroleum students to reconsider pursuing that career.

Companies must simultaneously address key drivers in all three stages of the employee life cycle, changing how they attract, develop, and retain people.

The impact on recruitment could scarcely be more profound; recruiters must bridge the gap between the next generation and the old pros through new methods more aligned with a technological era.

Changing the recruitment model

During the latest generational collision in the oil industry, two new game-changers entered the recruitment arena: (a) social media and (b) a “scientific” method to make the hiring process more seamlessly on target. Not even half a decade ago, pioneering social media had hardly gotten their collective feet wet and certainly were not a business tool. Now, however, an array of popular and effective business networking social media (with Facebook and Twitter among the best known) have become widely used.

A small sampling includes LinkedIn, Plaxo, Ziggs, Ecademy, MEETin, Spoke, NetParty, Foursquare, Hotfrog, and Jigsaw, along with the more-established CareerBuilder and Monster job sites. Social media cannot be dismissed as a fad. Use of sites like these represents a fundamental shift in how companies, recruiters, and job candidates communicate in today’s global community. Looking past yesterday’s idea that social media are only for teenagers, the recruitment process has embraced a technology that allows recruiters to both engage and interact with future employees in a dynamic environment.

While referrals remain a major source for new hires, the passive candidate pool increasingly is best reached through social media. In addition to using social media as a major tool for search and communications, companies/recruiters need to have a presence on the best-known social media sites to both display company profiles and announce new job openings. Similarly, in terms of being electronically in touch 24/7 worldwide, recruiters now can see what others are saying about a particular company, and that knowledge can be used to help engage potential candidates.

Also within this mix of Internet technologies for recruiting is the dominance of “push” (delivery of information to users) over “pull” (responding to a user’s request for information). Today’s recruitment environment has become clearly tilted toward proactivity.

Making Technical Recruitment More Scientific

The last place companies want to make major investment mistakes is in hiring skilled technical professionals based on guesstimate conclusions that he/she “looks like” the right individual. Yet that has been the historical approach. Executives at these same companies would never authorize the purchase of expensive real-time downhole drilling equipment because it “looks good.” They would require a more definitive vetting process for capabilities and performance to get the most precise product fit for the job.

Why should any company expect to consistently bring on board top performers for the long term if screening and hiring are done on an ad hoc basis? What is needed is a scientific process.

Through what has become known in the industry as the Q4S Recruitment Project Management Platform, more companies are replacing gut-instinct hiring decisions with a hiring approach that consistently delivers a bona fide fit for their organization. Led by a recruitment project manager, the Q4S process comprises four stages – each with a subset of detailed steps – designed to provide the best candidate without the guesswork:
1. Q-Staging
2. Q-Solution
3. Q-Service
4. Q-Stats

Q4S is not a new buzzword or a catchy strategy du jour but rather an outgrowth of highly valued project management principles (i.e., professionally proven) in the technology field. The process is viewed as technology-enabled, driven by the project manager rather than the old approach of narrowing down potential candidates and then somewhat informally finalizing selections.

Underlying the proven Q4S approach is that it is both scalable and repeatable, while feeding off a global virtual office that allows recruiters to best leverage connection technologies 24/7, including state-of-the art laptops, telephones, and smartphones.

Into The Future

Will the Big Crew Change fade away? Given the oil industry’s cyclical nature and fluctuating demand for skilled technical professionals, probably not. It is imperative that organizations ensure recruitment is as sophisticated and scientific a process as possible so that they can conduct the most efficient, effective hiring process. Just as geologists and geophysicists seek the most definitive answers, companies should accept nothing less than definitive in hiring the people tasked with successful E&P.