Resume Content for Oil and Gas Professionals - What Makes the Cut?

This is the second of a series on effective resume preparation by SCA's upstream oil and gas recruiter, Mark Connor. This and other timely articles pertinent to upstream professionals may be found in the latest issue of SCA's 4th Qtr GeoLOGIC newsletter. 

Mark Connor

Resumes have evolved significantly over the past 20 years, due in large part to the arrival of the Computer Age and, more recently, the social media revolution. Gone are the days when a resume would be printed on parchment quality paper and “snail mailed” to a prospective employer. In today’s job market, a resume is a digital document, formatted as a Word or .pdf file and attached to a “cover letter” email. In all probability, the resume itself will soon be a thing of the past as companies begin to explore the potential of “Profile Pages” offered by websites such as Linkedin, and even video resumes, giving applicants a chance to sell themselves and their backgrounds in a short video clip.

But, for the time being, the resume still has its place in the hiring process and the information it contains needs to be more concise and accessible than ever before. As discussed in our previous article, it is important to keep in mind that your resume is likely to be screened by several people before any interview is arranged, so information should a resume include?

Traditionally, a resume can contain information that is unnecessary and even detrimental to your chances of being selected for interview. Information such as marital status, names and ages of your children, religious or political groups, your hobbies or even the current status of your health are facts that you may feel proud to disclose, but are of little interest to a Recruiter trying to determine your technical abilities. Personal statements can also be a minefield – your own opinion regarding your work ethic, mentioning the fact you always give 110% and that you are “equally capable of working alone or as part of a team” does little to separate you from other applicants making the same claims. For consulting positions in the Geology, Geophysics and Reservoir Engineering community, there are only three key pieces of information that Recruiters are looking for:

•  What are your areas of specialization with your technical discipline?
• What areas of the world have you worked?
• What software are you capable of operating

When companies request a consultant, they typically have a specific problem that needs to be resolved. It is likely to be project specific and have defined technical deliverables with the tasks performed on whichever software the company uses. No learning curves, no training - Hiring Managers need a fully qualified and uniquely experienced expert to “hit the ground running." Managers approach specialist consulting companies to identify the right person because they know that the Consultant will be screened, vetted, interviewed, and referenced before a resume even reaches the hiring managers desk.

A good resume containing the right information will allow a Recruiter (and, later, a Hiring Manager) to identify your suitability for a specific assignment almost immediately, so focus as much of your resume as you can on the three key areas above. Keep it factual, objective and detailed enough to supply sufficient evidence that you can provide the solution to the company's problem.  Recruiters want to place consultants just as much as consultants want to be placed, so make sure the information is easy to access and Recruiters and Hiring Managers will be able to match you to your next consulting assignment time and time again. 

The Resume as Glorified Business Card: Tips to Upstream Professionals on Landing an Interview

At SCA, we not only provide consulting and training services to the upstream oil and gas industry, we also assist in screening and recruiting direct hire candidates. Recruiter Mark Connor has put together some tips for prospective candidates on landing an interview with your employer of choice.  In this first installment of a two-part series, he describes the essence of an effective resume and the different audiences with whom you must be prepared to communicate. This article and more can be found in the latest GeoLOGIC Newsletter, now available for download here. 

SCA's Mark Connor

Drilling Engineers have a tendency to get straight to the point, and it was a Drilling Engineer who summarized the essence of a resume to me in four words – “A Glorified Business Card”. A business card is a few square inches of space in which a professional is required to sum themselves up as concisely as possible, so what information makes it on there? Your name, job title, company and contact details. Nothing else makes the cut. A resume is intended to relate the same core information, albeit in a little more detail - but where a business card is an effective tool to use when making a new business contact, what is the real purpose of a resume?

One vital misconception regarding the role of a resume is that a resume will get you a job. In reality, your goal when writing a resume should be to get an INTERVIEW. Your success in a job search will hinge on your interview and a well written resume will get you that interview. With that in mind, resumes should contain enough information to catch attention and get you in front of a decision maker.

A second misconception regarding the resume is that it WILL be evaluated by the hiring manager. In reality, the resume will more than likely be assessed by at least three other people before it reaches the decision maker, and those other people are unlikely to be from a technical background. Consider the following scenarios.

•        You are acquainted with the hiring manager and you send your resume directly to that person. In this case, the likelihood is that the manager will already be aware your abilities and the resume acts merely as a formality.

•         You deal with a specialized Recruiting/Consulting firm. These companies deal with Hiring Managers day in, day out and they have a deep understanding of the technical areas they deal with. A Professional Recruiter may not be from a technical background, but they are able to look past “key words” and understand the nuances of your technical abilities and how they relate to their client’s needs. A recommendation from a specialist Recruiter can be extremely effective in gaining an interview.

•          You deal with a generalist staffing company that has international clientele but no true specialization. These companies often have access to every vacancy that their client has open, so they work on many unrelated job openings every day. The key word search becomes a factor in resume selection and an understanding of technical suitability becomes limited.

•          You “apply online”. Regularly described as “black holes”, web portals do an excellent job of tracking applications but it is extremely difficult to influence the selection process.

So, considering the above scenarios, how should you approach resume preparation? It needs to appeal to different audiences. A resume should contain easily identifiable key words and a sufficiently simplistic breakdown of your job role to be understood by a Recruiter. However, it also needs to be detailed enough to inform a Hiring Manager that you are capable of performing the duties required. It requires a delicate balance but in order to be successful in a job search, your resume will need to convince more than just the Hiring Manager that you are the right person to call in for an interview.