The boom in the North Sea oil and gas industry has been under way for a number of years and shows no signs of stalling, leading to skill shortages across the board, says Graeme Fyfe, Director of Hays, the global recruiting firm in Aberdeen.
“Crunch points, however, are subsea and drilling engineers. With many new projects now coming on board many drilling contractors are over-subscribed, there is a huge number of projects in the pipeline but experienced drilling engineers are almost non-existent. Subsea engineers are already in short supply and many will be attracted to the new Statoil plant coming to Aberdeen soon which will only exacerbate the situation.
“One of the difficulties is this candidate-driven market, where skilled people are tempted to move by higher salaries. This high turnover results in a cycle of wage inflation, where everyone then has to follow suit by offering even higher salaries to attract the right talent. Add to this an ageing demographic which means that, as people leave the industry or retire, there aren’t enough young people coming in to fill the gaps. It’s a costly, time-consuming cycle.
“The shortage is due to a number of factors: in the late-90s the economic climate was such that many engineering graduates found it difficult secure jobs and went on to pursue careers in other sectors. That skills gap is manifesting itself now. A similar thing happened in the teaching profession – at one stage there was a massive shortage of teachers which took five or 10 years to fill.
“In addition, there’s been a real decline in the number of oil undergraduates. Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen is very focused on engineering, but this needs to be the case in other educational institutions throughout the country. Otherwise, the entire oil industry will continue to fish for talent in the same very small, finite pool, leaving some jobs unfilled for months.
“The situation will only improve if employers realise they’re not going to find the perfect candidate who ticks all their boxes without looking further afield, thinking creatively and supporting training. This means considering people with skills in related industries like say, aviation, defence, automotive or steel, which can be effectively transferred to oil and gas with the right training and support. Some companies have begun to recognise this and are starting engineering conversion programmes which will help in the short term. But in the longer term, action is needed to attract and train more mechanical and technical engineers – especially women – not just in the North Sea area, but right across the UK.”
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