Read the first in our series of interviews to be published at the start of each month. This month, we chat with Anglo’s Head of Energy, Andrew Edge. Here, he discusses how he ended up recruiting within the oil and gas sector, and what he sees as the challenges and priorities facing the industry today.
Anglo: Tell us a bit about yourself. What is your professional background?
Andy: I started up by doing a City & Guilds certification. I hadn’t done education for some years, but I was enjoying the work experience and the studying, so I decided to do a degree. I graduated in 1997 and got a job with Western Geophysical (now WesternGeco) working offshore in geophysics. I moved in-house in 2000 and due to redundancy in 2005, I started looking for another job and eventually ended up in recruitment. I moved to Anglo at the beginning of 2009 as a senior consultant. I then spent two years as an in-house recruiter with Baker Hughes, looking after their recruitment for the eastern hemisphere for their Reservoir Development Services Group. I took redundancy as my function and my western hemisphere counterpart changed to a global role. The inside knowledge acquired was invaluable, so when I returned to Anglo in 2013 as a Principal Recruiter, I was promoted to Head of Energy shortly thereafter.
Anglo: What attracted you to work for Anglo?
Andy: The idea of setting up the upstream oil and gas division from scratch, which I did successfully. The company has a large reach within three core industries, allowing us to concentrate and not over-reach by having countless vertical markets. Anglo came across as professional, technical and passionate about what they do best which is providing quality candidates to its clients.
Anglo: What are you passionate about in the workplace?
Andy: Using my technical knowledge (either my degree, experience in geophysics or my in-house/agency experience) to help engineers find their next role. Talking to both candidates and potential clients, and advising how we can assist them. Growing my own division is very a exciting part of my job as well as passing my knowledge and experience on to others within Anglo.
Anglo: How do you see your future with Anglo?
Andy: Happy and settled, so good. I would like to increase the team we have and double its size next year. Personally, I’d like to progress to next level/senior management.
Anglo: What are the greatest challenges of the energy recruitment industry?
Andy: At the moment, global economic conditions such as sanctions with Russia, military operations in the Middle East. This affects commodities such as oil and gas and its price, which has dramatically reduced over the last few weeks. This, unfortunately, in turn can affect what oil companies do in either not releasing projects or putting projects on hold. This could hurt some parts of the industry such as the EPC and subsea companies as they win work from the oil companies.
Anglo: What are the key challenges you face when recruiting for overseas clients?
Andy: One issue is certainly the lack of feedback and the amount of feedback that we get to pass on to candidates. I definitely think that a standard operating procedure should be agreed with companies that we work with, outlining timelines for CV submissions, feedback, interviews, offers, etc. There is a large amount of candidates submitted from various sources to companies and the main issues are that companies have in-house recruiters who reject perfectly good CVs/candidates without a hiring manager ever seeing them. Such hiring managers may not have the experience or time to pass this back after reviewing CVs. Since 2009, the lack of ability to talk directly to hiring managers about the roles or candidates submitted has, in my opinion, hurt the industry.
Anglo: What makes Anglo the agency of choice for oil and gas clients and candidates?
Andy: The ability to provide an outstanding service and quality candidates. Also, having industry qualified professionals with both in-house and agency experience who understand what clients want. That gives us the ability to discuss on their level, and to have realistic and good business terms. Also, a large database of candidates and a large network which gives us the ability to find suitable quality candidates quickly for the roles.
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