Working in a booming sector

Matthew Branch

Rapid expansion has characterised the oil and gas sector in various global locations. For recruiters in this niche too, business is booming. Matthew Branch, senior consultant at Petroplan, describes his experience of the sector.

Following eight years as an IT recruiter, Matthew Branch moved into the oil and gas sector and joined Petroplan. After two years in the post in Surrey, he relocated to Petroplan Canada in January 2013.

“Oil and gas recruitment is quite different from the other forms of recruitment I’ve had exposure to in my career. You’re generally working to place very intelligent, experienced people – experts in their field across a real variety of roles – which both keeps things interesting and provides great experience in developing business relationship skills.

The other big difference is that the nature of the industry means that the job you’re doing involves taking a bird’s eye view of an entire project. For example, the project may be to extract resources and sell them downstream over a four to five-year period. You’ll be responsible for sourcing talent for the client at each stage of the project during that period, and feel very much like a partner to the client in delivering that outcome. This is as opposed to a lot of financial or general recruitment which is often much more narrow and reactive, where you’re usually replacing roles and don’t need to have much of a picture of the client’s operations, or its aims as a business. The former is far more satisfying.

“I was an account manager in the UK, which meant looking after a specific client – in this case BP – in terms of its overall personal needs and the broader Petroplan relationship. But my role in Canada is more about general sourcing, and I place a wide range of candidates with various clients [including Enbridge Pipelines, Husky Energy and Conoco Philips].

Personally, I like the more hands-on nature of this type of work, so the shift has suited me.

Working in Canada you’re fishing in an especially small pool of workers due to Canada’s restrictive labour laws, which mean jobs usually only go to permanent residents or citizens. This makes for a much greater challenge. In the UK I might, for instance, get 80 applications per job, and 10-20 would be high quality, whereas in Canada I might be lucky to get 30 applications, and it may be that none of are of the required quality.

This means that the work is even more of a relationship-based, headhunting exercise, which is perfect for me as it’s precisely this sort of recruitment work I enjoy and excel at as it has more of a personal edge, and often necessitates getting to know certain people very well over a good length of time.

Tenaciousness is a big help, and you need to have quite a go-getter attitude, and a willingness to persevere through bad times as well as good. Some weeks you’ll get nowhere at all, and then a bunch of leads will suddenly come through at once later down the line. The key is to have the motivation to keep going. Given the importance of relationships to the industry, a thick skin and flair for diplomacy are also major pros.

A good understanding of the oil and gas market is also essential, but this isn’t necessarily a prior requirement. My market knowledge was very basic when I joined Petroplan, which puts all of its recruits through an intensive oil and gas training course conducted by senior industry veterans. You learn the energy supply chain across a range of different scenarios, for example offshore versus onshore. So you needn’t be an industry expert, or even know much at all, to get your foot in the door. Far more important is the willingness to learn.

Over and above everything else it’s the travel aspect that appeals to me. Eventually I’ll probably want to up sticks and see where else my career can take me – South Africa is an attractive option, as is East Asia. The great thing about working in oil and gas is that I’ve no doubt such opportunities will come my way.”