WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
Next-gen petroleum engineering
students: Flexibility, growth and
culture among key motivators
Students share personal perspectives of how
they chose their majors and what’s influencing
their choice to start an oilfield career
STAFF REPORT
One of the biggest challenges the oil and
gas industry faces today is attracting and
retaining younger talent. Even though
hydrocarbons are expected to remain part
of the energy mix for decades to come, it
has become increasingly difficult to get
younger voices to buy in.

At the IADC Annual General Meeting
in Austin, Texas, on 9 November, four
petroleum engineering students – from
the University of Louisiana at Lafayette
(ULL), University of Wyoming, Louisiana
State University (LSU) and Texas Tech
University – shared their perspectives on
how the industry can help address that
challenge, as well as their own stories
about how they are making their career
choices. All four students are currently
studying petroleum engineering and hold
leadership positions at IADC Student
Chapters at their respective schools.

For some of these students, even though
they knew they wanted to become engi-
neers, this industry was barely on their
radars at first – perhaps they grew up
far away from the oilfield, like Patrick
Stapleton from LSU and Clay Ostrander
from ULL. For both of them, it was through
talking with people who knew about the
industry and learning about opportunities
for travel and flexible work schedules that
brought them into oil and gas.

They were also attracted by the diversi-
ty in potential careers, even just within the
oil and gas sector, when selecting petro-
leum engineering as their major. “You’re
not siloed into one specific discipline. You
can go worldwide, you can do drilling, you
can do production, you can do reservoir.

It’s up to your personal decision of where
you want to go,” Mr Ostrander said.

Another student, Cody Zayonc with the
University of Wyoming, pointed to the
practice of petroleum engineering itself
as the thing that attracted him the most.

“I knew I wanted to be an engineer, but
when I started looking through all the
options, quite a few of them seemed pretty
boring,” he said. “When I came across
petroleum engineering and saw what they
do, just from an engineering standpoint, it
seemed to be the most exciting. It’s kind of
mind-blowing what petroleum engineers
can do.”
Sarah Qureshi with Texas Tech had a
similar perspective, pointing to innova-
tion and opportunity as what motivated
her to choose this industry. “I also appre-
ciate the chance to work with the most
hard-working individuals that you’ll prob-
ably ever meet,” she added. Ms Qureshi,
who has already had two internships with
ConocoPhillips, is slated to join the opera-
tor full time upon graduation.

Seeing the potential
While these next-gens are excited about
beginning their oilfield careers, they
acknowledge that it can be an uphill battle
explaining their choices to other people in
their generation. “The big thing I always
hear, especially from other engineering
majors, is that we’re pigeonholing our-
selves and that it’s too narrow of a field,”
Mr Stapleton said.

His personal experience tells him oth-
erwise, however. “At Chevron, if you go to
a different floor, it’s a completely different
world. You can be talking to production or
land management or drilling and comple-
tions. There are so many skills that can
become applicable in other fields that I
don’t think it’s nearly as narrow as people
tend to think it is.”
For Mr Zayonc, whenever he gets ques-
tioned by peers on his career choice, he
not only takes the opportunity to clear up
any misconceptions about oil and gas, but
he also flips the conversation and tries to
convince them to join.

“I know there’s more than enough jobs
because of all the people we need, so if I
can try and pull them in, that’s good for
me and them,” he said. “Even beyond the
technical engineers, there are also a lot
of people on the support staff side, and
everyone I’ve met has been very happy to
be in this industry and want to stay in it.

I always tell my peers, why don’t you give
it a shot?”
Personal connections and stories like
that have always played a key role in
oilfield recruitment, and will likely con-
tinue to, but the industry will also have
to expand its outreach in order to better
engage with the next generation.

This may include targeting people in
areas that are outside of the traditional
oil and gas states like Texas, Louisiana
and Oklahoma, Mr Ostrander said. People
who don’t live in those areas are much
less familiar with this industry and will
require more outreach and education in
order to understand what opportunities
are available.

“To get inside that bubble, you kind of
have to take a leap of faith,” he said. “I
grew up on a farm and I had many other
friends who grew up on a farm. They’re
hard workers, and they would thoroughly
enjoy the adventure of working in the oil
and gas industry. They just didn’t know
that’s a possibility.”
Looking to their own future careers,
all the students agreed that they put a
premium on positive leadership and cul-
ture when selecting their workplace. “For
me personally, culture was pretty much
everything,” Mr Stapleton said. “I went
off of more how they interacted with me
personally and not so much the technical
side of the interview. It’s more about, is this
a friendly person that I’ll want to come in
and work for everyday?” DC
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