Candidates seek mission and purpose in the energy industry.

Written by Lori Schaub Kessler and Yvonne Pesquera

Key Takeaways

• Energy companies provide exciting career opportunities, but need to better position themselves as highly innovative employers of choice.
• Managers need carefully vetted candidates, with an understanding of their hard and soft skills.
• People leaders need to attract talent, upskill existing talent and retain the knowledge of retiring talent—with easy-to-use technologies, clear processes and change management soft skills.

The staffing plan can’t wait. Energy companies deal with a frenzy of forces—from decarbonization to new market entrants—along with growing demands for more energy. Managers are pressured to fill roles quickly or risk losing ground in key areas of competitive advantage. So, just go out and hire, right?

In the past 10 years, the U.S. labor market added more growth in labor demand than in labor supply: 29.1 million jobs versus 14.1 million workers, to be exact. Every employer is looking for good people right now. The energy industry, however, has significant muscle to flex in size and strategic importance to our country’s economy and national security. People leaders should further lean into energy’s vital role in everyday living to create a meaningful employee value proposition for talent candidates.

Creativity abounds in the energy industry

Many people hear “energy jobs” and think of rig work. But the reality is more nuanced and sophisticated. Consider that, in today’s world, everyone is an end user—from mobile to desktop to operating equipment. Therefore, user interfaces (such as internal processes and external systems) greatly benefit from user experience (UX) talent, such as Service Design Lead, UX Researcher, and Product Designer, to name a few. Talent candidates are always intrigued to learn more about design career opportunities in the energy industry.

Let’s also recognize that energy companies are powerhouses of innovation—from research and development (R&D) to pilot programs of advanced technologies. These types of exciting stories are told through the skills of marketing, creative, and design talent, such as: Marketing Specialist, Front-End Developer, and Social Media Manager, as a few examples. It’s a great match: Talent candidates thrive on storytelling and energy companies have compelling messages to get across.

People leaders need to craft a talent strategy that looks beyond the boxes on an org chart. It’s not the job needs to get done, but the “why.”?

• How does a talented individual benefit by working for an energy organization with a societal mission?
• How does the company better engage all of its stakeholders with fresh, creative approaches to people, processes, and technology?

Digital marketing and data analysis

Digital marketing is its own universe. From email campaigns to social media posts to ads on streaming services, energy companies have more ways than ever to reach customers and stakeholders using digital technologies. But if marketing is already a core function in any organization, what exactly makes “digital” marketing so distinct? Digital marketing is measurable, and any measurement of success begins with the talent to execute on strategies and channels for brand promotion.

Take, for example, the role of a Marketing Automation Manager in an energy company. The right talent not only implements automated marketing campaigns, but knows how to further optimize customer segmentation. Any industry can talk about target markets, but in the energy industry, delivering brand marketing along upstream, midstream, and downstream operations stands out as a competitive differentiation.

With expert management of the marketing technology stack underway, Data Analysts and Data Scientists can step into the thick of all the accumulated data, such as search, demand, and lead generation. What’s interesting about these talent roles is that energy companies don’t stop at mere reporting. Instead, Data Analysts and Data Scientists can help business unit Marketing Managers model future scenarios to identify untapped areas of customer wants.

People leaders need carefully vetted candidates with an understanding of their hard and soft skills, like communication preferences.

• The days of “pushing out marketing” are long over; today's marketing paradigm “pulls in” reams of data. What are the skills to look for in Data Analysts??
• If the digital marketing team are professional communicators, does management know which digital communication tools they prefer to use?

Co-creation and change management

Great talent shifts are occurring across sectors. With emerging technologies, such as AI, virtual reality and digital simulations, we see many organizations offering new learning programs to employees. In the energy industry, specifically, the demographics of workers is undergoing a natural, albeit large, transition: “400,000 employees may retire from the oil and gas sector in the coming years.” Energy managers are looking at ways to capture all that institutional knowledge from retiring subject matter experts. Having a knowledge–retention process in place is a necessary for cataloging and indexing lessons learned and best practices.

For some business units, it just may be a matter of co-creating design systems, user experiences, and marketing assets. It’s important to know that these resource options exist and this approach can serve as a useful bridge to a more focused talent strategy.

Mission and purpose in the energy industry

In our talent survey, a near-universal response was the search for meaning in the workplace. Candidates express that they want “more than a job.” But this is about more than desire. People are motivated by brand purpose and that emotional connection drives performance.?

• 94% of high-performing teams are “very or moderately” motivated to contribute to fulfilling a company's brand purpose.
• Only 76% of low-to-moderate performing teams share that sense of motivation.

The energy industry is set to deliver on a high performer’s aspirations. From the rise of energy demand worldwide to an energy mix of renewables, energy corporations are rooted in the mission of social responsibility and deliver on the purpose of improving lives with energy. In this tight labor market, the advantage lies with energy companies to better position themselves as the highly innovative, mission-driven employer of choice.

This post originally appeared on our Aquent Talent blog .

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