It’s milk-run time, with thousands of graduates about to come on to the marketplace, with many doubtless looking for careers that have fat salaries attached.
As the world’s population grows – estimated to reach 7.5billion by 2015 – so does the demand for energy. And energy companies frequently offer among the best salaries and working conditions anywhere, especially petroleum majors.
With climate change arguably the greatest challenge of this century and renewable sources unlikely to provide the world’s energy needs for some time (maybe 20 or 30 years or more) there has never been a more interesting time to begin a graduate career in energy, according to web-based service www.courses-careers.com
Energy readers are mostly au fait with the fact that the energy industry faces highly controversial issues and growing public demand, not only to discover ways of extracting, processing and using current energy sources more effectively, but also to develop clean fuels that do no long-term damage to people or the planet.
A graduate career in energy could give you the opportunity to be part of cleaning up the environment and developing renewable sources of energy. And that is precisely why the energy industry needs to attract talented graduates to develop new technology, to promote innovation and apply it at scale.
“Can you create more energy for the world without compromising the resources or the future of the planet?” asks courses-careers.
“People need heat, light and mobility – and in the developed world most of us take it for granted. Despite this, the energy industry and companies like BP and Shell are often in the firing line, held responsible for increasing energy consumption and depleting resources as well as for the environmental effects of using carbon-based fuels.”
However, it is these self-same energy corporations that offer some of the best formal graduate training programmes in the world.
They span the spectrum of technical disciplines, including automotive engineering; chemistry; chemical/process engineering; information technology; drilling and completion engineering; geoscience; health, safety, security and environment (HSSE) technology; instrument, control and electrical engineering; marine engineering/naval architecture; mechanical engineering; offshore engineering; operations and project engineering; petroleum engineering, and reservoir engineering.
Because energy is big business, there is considerable demand for functional experts in commercial areas including marketing and business analysis; in financial control and accounting; procurement and supply chain management, and, of course, human resources.
Open to people with an excellent academic background (the equivalent of a 2.1 degree or better in the UK) in a relevant discipline, where required, formal graduate training programmes typically last three to five years and involve cutting one’s teeth in two or more different roles.
Mobility is also usually a requirement, as most graduates are expected to move around and experience different projects, teams and working environments. Students who have grown up or studied in Aberdeen are familiar with the highly mobile nature of the petroleum industry. The oil majors typically expect graduate recruits to complete structured courses and personal study so that, where appropriate, individuals can gain relevant professional qualifications – for example, chartered accountant or engineer status.
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