Top Strategies for Oil and Gas Industry Recruitment

The price of gas is one of the most talked-about topics this year.

Soaring prices have prompted households around the world to tighten their budgets or accelerate plans to buy an EV.

Economies steadily rebounding from the pandemic, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are some of the main factors driving prices up at the pumps, and analysts expect prices will remain high in the near term.

Volatile job market

Current high prices have been welcomed by energy companies who saw business slump during extended pandemic lockdown periods when demand for fuel collapsed.

In the U.S., the oil price crash of 2020 triggered the fastest layoffs in the history of the US Oil &Gas (O&G) industry. 

And although prices have doubled since then, only about 50% of lost jobs have come back, according to an O&G sector report produced by Deloitte. 

As seen in other sectors - since the onset of the pandemic - workers are no longer motivated solely by high wages. People have readdressed their priorities, with some putting family time, personal health, and quality of life ahead of good money to be made in O&G jobs, which often involve long hours in the field away from home.

Recruitment challenges and recruitment technology assistance

Challenge: O&G sector has a negative image and reputation

Cyclical hiring and laying off employees has negatively impacted the industry’s reputation in the eyes of job seekers. 

In addition, many energy sector candidates are attracted to clean energy players, which don’t carry the same stigma as O&G companies. Current fossil fuel workers also feel pressure from a wide variety of people, including NGOs and protestors, local politicians, as well as friends, family, and their children, about the environmental impact made by the industry.  

Technology solution

Career pages that inform, connect and excite

A dynamic, vibrant, information and content-packed company career page – hosted on the company website – should be optimized to showcase current job openings, the company’s history, balance sheet, vision, and businesses, as well as the benefits and positives of working for the organization.

A career page gives you an opportunity to tell your side of the story, and in the case of O&G companies, this should include information on progressive strategies such as commitments to decarbonization and sustainability and efforts to retrain staff and support the communities in which they operate.

Information on flexible and agile workforce structures that empower remote, hybrid, and cross-border teams are other details sought out by O&G job hunters.

Where appropriate, content should be visually appealing. Short video clips featuring actual workers talking about working conditions, training and development pathways, safety standards, employee benefits, and other features make the company stand out from the others.

The best career pages – such as Cisco’s ‘We are Cisco’ page – promote content that is authentic, usually workers talking into a camera on-site or in the office, speaking naturally and freely. 

Done well, this content will be shared on social media and recruitment websites. Videos that are overproduced or have a lot of “corporate speak” could trigger a negative response. 

While producing a slick, information-packed career page may seem daunting, sophisticated Applicant Tracking System (ATS) platforms today feature career page-building toolkits that are designed to simplify and speed up the career page-building process. 

Challenge: In the wake of the great resignation trend that has spread to many parts of the world, labor shortages remain an issue, and the competition to find and recruit workers is intense – in the case of skilled workers, they can pick and choose jobs and set their own salary range and benefits.   

READ MORE: 4 Ways to Create a Great Career Page using Recruitment ATS

READ MORE: Improve Your Recruitment System by Taking Inspiration from these 6 Amazing Career Pages

Technology solution

Punch up job posting campaigns 

Tight labor markets intensify the pressure on achieving “right-first-time” outcomes. The goal for recruiters is to reach as many potential candidates as possible and find out which sites are more effective than others for different roles.

ATS solutions take a lot of the guesswork out of job ad placement. 

Analytics functions offered by ATS platforms track the performance of adverts to identify the ones gaining attention and the ones that are not performing well. In those cases, you may want to boost them with paid social media campaigns to increase the number of applications. 

An ATS also makes it easier to seamlessly integrate with a partner job board  enabling recruiters to post adverts to as many job boards as necessary, from tens to hundreds to thousands in a single click.

Tracking where candidates are finding your job adverts is another benefit offered by ATS platforms. Information and data gathered by the ATS will help you finetune your future advertising campaigns – for example, industry-specific job boards or sites may be more effective for some roles than adverts on Facebook.

RESOURCES: Browse through our collection of ready-to-use job description templates.

Build a talent pool 

Make every interview or job hunt from the past and present count. Recruitment software makes this a reality today thanks to the ability to easily and conveniently save the details, comments, and rankings of all candidates interviewed for previous roles.

Building a strong online talent pool of present and past candidates gives you options the next time you have to recruit. So, in addition to looking for external candidates, you can also scan your talent pool to find “good-fit matches” from prior interviews.  

Offer a superior user experience

If job hunters are interested in an open role, they want their application process to be fast, seamless, and easy to follow. This especially applies to digital natives, Generation-Z candidates, who have grown up with the internet and using apps for everything. 

Delivering a great first step in the recruitment process is essential because first impressions matter hugely in recruitment. If your application platform is clunky, visually unappealing, and hard to use, in-demand O&G industry workers will probably not apply – they could also share their negative experiences and feedback about your platform with friends and colleagues on social media.

ATS platforms enable you to build accessible, intuitive, and attractive application platforms that are also mobile-friendly, which is vital because most job seekers use mobile devices to find and apply for jobs.

Get a recruitment head start

While your HR and hiring teams will already be using sophisticated recruitment software and ATS systems, making the most of the functionality available should not be overlooked.  

In addition to scanning resumes and shortlisting top candidates, be sure to put your ATS platforms to use in creating dynamic career pages and talent pools, providing super user-friendly application forms, and engaging analytics features to finetune job ad placements, and publishing new ads. 

Manatal ATS platforms have been adopted by all types of businesses around the world, and if you want to tap top talent in the O&G sector, we invite you to sign up for a 14-day free trial to see how our solutions manage leads, clients, and candidates seamlessly, effortlessly and in-line with your budget.

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