Hays Oil & Gas
January - March 2012
Hotspots
We have noted strong demand across all sectors for Business Development, Bid and Proposal Engineers and Managers with Operators, Contractors and OEMs clearly viewing the APAC region as a strong market and targeting it for growth.
Additionally our Subsea and Offshore Construction division continues to see strong demand for Project Engineers, SURF and Installation Engineers for EPCI works with projects in Indonesia and Malaysia driving that sector.
We are also recruiting on the G&P side with projects in Indonesia once again creating demand with a particular emphasis on Reservoir Engineers and Geologists with experience of Shale Gas fields.
With a large number of projects being awarded to vendors early this year, we expect increased demand for Project Managers and Senior Project Managers with marine and oil and gas project experience for the products and solutions providers.
Overcoming skills shortages
With companies struggling to fill the gaps with existing candidate pools the recommendation is to look to adopt a two tier strategy. Firstly to tackle the immediate shortfalls we advise employers to look at drawing on talent available in other regions. Secondly we advise them to establish strong graduate training and development programmes to tackle the long-term issues.
The coming quarter
Although not immune to the financial turmoil in Europe, the oil and gas industry in APAC remains cautiously optimistic for the year ahead and we anticipate steady growth with Indonesia and Malaysia in particular creating opportunities.
Confidence is such that we expect steady growth in both contract and permanent recruitment.
Employer trends
There has been a noticeable emphasis placed on recruiting local candidates, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia with employers increasingly reluctant to pay expatriate packages. Indeed employer's expectations on salaries and candidate expectations on salaries, as always, seem to be moving in opposite directions; employers expect to be able to offer local packages to secure expatriate candidates. The roles where full expatriate packages are on offer are decreasing and tend to be reserved only for the more senior and hard to fill job titles.
Candidate trends
There is typically an oversupply of candidates for lower level roles, while candidates for technical and senior roles are still in short supply.
