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Future Prospects - Promoting a career for life

April 2011

Katie Ward is ideally placed to lead the campaign to convince

youngsters that the oil and gas industry offers a vast range of lifelong

opportunities and is not just for oil covered engineers working

offshore.

It is not so long since Katie, OPITO’s Communications and Marketing Manager, was under the same misapprehensions.

Now she is one of the ambassadors going out to schools as part of the “It’s Your Future” project, informing pupils that if they hope to follow a career in law, accountancy, human resources , or almost any other discipline - including engineering - they can do so as part of the oil and gas industry.

The idea of sending young ambassadors to schools came from a series of “Next Generation” conferences organised to ensure the voices of the young members of the oil and gas industry could be heard.

That resulted in groups pitching ideas at a Dragons’ Den style event at Offshore Europe and now one of these pitches has been turned in an ongoing project to harness the potential of the “Next Generation” and prevent damaging skills shortages in the future.

Katie - along with a group of young people from across the industry - was tasked with transforming the pitch into something real when she joined OPITO and now a successful It’s Your Future pilot has just been completed in schools across Aberdeen city and shire and plans are underway to gradually roll the programme out across the UK.

“The industry needs to attract young people into the sector and at the moment we are competing with other seemingly more glamorous sectors. Many children seem to think of oil and gas as quite a dirty industry and they also believe, quite wrongly, that everyone works offshore,” she said.

“There are numerous myths surrounding the industry amongst 14-17 year olds, even in the Aberdeen area, and if this is happening in the Aberdeen area where so many of their parents work in the industry you can imagine the lack of knowledge elsewhere in the country.”

OPITO has therefore put together a short DVD, featuring young people, which explodes these myths. It is now being taken out to schools, colleges and career fairs by young “ambassadors” – volunteers who have joined the industry in a wide variety of jobs.

“The ambassadors explain that it is a pioneering and high tech industry. People are going where people have never gone before and they should be excited to have the opportunity to be involved in it.

“The DVD is taken into school by a young ambassador because we want the person talking to the kids to be not too far away in age from the kids themselves.”

A suite of classroom activities which are in line with the Curriculum for Excellence has been developed to accompany the presentation and anyone who is interested in the project should contact itsyourfuture@opito.com for further details.

“We want to build up a network of ambassadors so they will only have to give up two days a year – one day for training and one day giving their presentation – although they can obviously do more if they wish” said Katie.

“The more ambassadors we have the more visits we can do and the more successful the project will be.

“We have about 20 who have undergone their training so far and they all have to undergo disclosure checks to ensure they are suitable for visiting schools.”

During training the ethos of the project is explained and they are given help on how to execute the classroom activities and on what might be good to include in their presentations.

“There are obviously key messages we want to get across - the breadth of careers available and the fact it is a high tech industry – but the main thing is the ambassadors’ own stories and how much they enjoy their job.

“I have been asked: ‘What are you going to do when the oil runs out?’ and I explain that it should not be an issue for someone considering a career in oil and gas because there is a long life left in the industry and in addition all the skills they learn are transferrable to other industries such as the renewables sector.

“Until I learned about it I was one of those who looked upon it as a bit of a dirty industry related to offshore and didn’t realise that more people in oil and gas actually work onshore. It has also allowed me to be more creative than in any previous job I have had and because I enjoy it so much it is easy to go out and speak about it.

“We would like to hear from anyone interested in being an ambassador and also from companies involved in the oil and gas sector which are prepared to give young members of staff time off to be ambassadors.

“They can contact Diane Johnston on 01224 787805 for further information.”