Grassroots Recruiting

When oil prices go up, so does industry hiring. The oil and gas industry has been quite clever about looking in other industries and even the military to swell their ranks when needed. But hiring students fresh out of college is still at the forefront of their recruiting strategy.

There are several reasons for this, the Great Crew Change being one. Also, petroleum engineering students, for instance, have spent at least four years being trained specifically for a career in oil and gas, whereas an electrical or mechanical engineer who’s lost a job in the automotive industry will require more cross training.

The biggest problem for oil and gas recruiters is finding the right candidates at a time when the number of students pursuing careers in engineering and geosciences is dwindling. It makes sense to have a recruiting strategy in place that puts the company at or near the top of a graduating student’s wish list.

One company’s approach

Unlike some of its competitors, ExxonMobil actually uses its own technical employees to recruit students in addition to their regular duties. “We call them our volunteer army,” said Bill Barron, a recruiting consultant for ExxonMobil’s US operations. “They take time out of their primary job responsibilities to be team captains, campus recruiters, or campus liaisons. Recruiting is my full-time job, and my main role is to support the business lines that go to the campuses to recruit the top students.”

The company looks at each recruiting year as a “season,” with its 2012 season kicking off in the fall of 2011. Barron said the season starts with an August kick-off for employees and continues in September with information sessions at the US campuses that ExxonMobil maintains relationships with. “These sessions basically sell the ExxonMobil story,” Barron said. “Most people know that we sell gasoline, but that sometimes is the extent of it.”

A primary function in these sessions is to emphasize the company’s philosophy of supporting long-term career development. “We’re hoping that when people work for us, they’ll work for us for 30 or 40 years,” he said. “Most of our benefits and policies are geared toward that long-term career orientation.”

Not all students are looking for that kind of professional development structure, he added. “It’s the number-one reason why people come to work for ExxonMobil,” he said. “It’s also the number-one reason why people decline our job offers.”

Being up front about the philosophy helps to ensure that those who seek employment with the company are aligned with its goals, he added.

About two weeks after the information sessions, company employees return to the campuses to interview students both for regular-hire positions and internships. “Like the good engineers that we are, we think the best way to recruit is a steady-state process,” Barron said. “We try to maintain a consistent approach to all of our campuses.” Each campus is given a prescribed number of referrals based on the number of hires the company needs that year.

Bill Barron, left, is a recruiting consultant for ExxonMobil’s US operations. Chris Harris and Marsha French lead recruitment efforts at Colorado School of Mines. (Photo courtesy of ExxonMobil)

Targeting recruits

Barron said that, unlike engineers, geoscientists are harder to find when tapping into ExxonMobil’s usual campuses. Geoscience recruiters have several targeted schools that they look to for recruits, and they also attend a number of technical society trade shows and industry conferences to find qualified candidates from schools where the company might not have a presence.

One campus on which ExxonMobil does have a presence is the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) in Golden, Colo. Like many other petroleum-related schools, CSM cranks out a goodly number of engineering graduates every year, and it also has a highly respected graduate program for budding geoscientists.

While the company hires engineers with a BS degree, it prefers to hire geoscientists who have pursued graduate degrees. This changes the flavor of the relationship ExxonMobil is able to establish with the student.

“The window of when they’re going to graduate is a moving target, so we don’t just go in for one season and take the top students,” Barron said. “We want to have a relationship with them so that when they finish their studies in one to four years they want to work for us.”

Chris Harris, senior research associate for ExxonMobil’s Upstream Research Company, recruits geophysicists on the Mines campus. Mines has a variety of programs – the Reservoir Characterization Project, the Center for Wave Phenomena, and the Center for Gravity, Electrical, and Magnetic Studies – that involve geophysics, and Harris said he recruits from all of these programs. Not all of the students are considering careers in oil and gas, however.

“We look for a solid background in geophysics or geology regardless of whether they’re interested in the petroleum industry,” Harris said. “For instance, I have interviewed an igneous petrologist because he had solid fundamentals.

“They’re all educable in the petroleum industry. They just need to have the interest. And it’s not a hard sell. It is more like ‘Come on over and have a look at the petroleum industry. You’re going to enjoy yourself.’”

Harris’ career with ExxonMobil has prepared him to answer students’ questions about opportunities within the company. “I get them to think about the many areas of geophysics that we have to offer,” he said. “I talk to them about the variety of opportunities available during the course of their careers. If they’re interested in a certain work area and then develop an interest in another area, it’s easy to make that transition.”

In some cases, that transition might take the student to a completely different part of the company. Harris had one student, for instance, who was interested in biochemical research. Harris steered the student toward ExxonMobil’s algae-to-fuels research program.

“It comes back to the wide array of opportunities,” he said. “Once they get interested in the organization, they’re able to access different areas.”

Another key factor at schools like CSM is the involvement of other ExxonMobil employees. For instance, the company is a key sponsor of the Reservoir Characterization Project. Many ExxonMobil geophysicists attend the project’s twice-yearly meetings where they establish relationships with the students, many of whom they mentor and advise on thesis committees. Harris said this is extremely helpful to him in his recruiting efforts.

“Students get a chance to see what we’re like,” he said. “The ExxonMobil people can see what type of work the students are doing. It’s one of the benefits of having people from the company work with the students. If the students have questions, they can send inquiries to those employees.”

Barron added that having students visit their prospective work sites also gives them exposure to current employees. “They come to our work locations and have several evaluation interviews,” he said. “We are also showing the opportunities that we have and the kind of work the business unit does.

“We try to introduce students to as many people as we can, usually connecting them with fellow alumni,” he added. “They get a feel for the kind of careers these people have had. Even in cases where people decline our offers, most of them talk about how great the people are.”

Harris emphasized that there is enough work in the energy industry to keep prospective employees interested and busy for many decades to come. “One of the things we emphasize is being the right fit for the student,” he said. “The right students can have a long career with us.”