As Alberta’s oil and gasoline sector struggles by means of a labour scarcity, some former business employees are pivoting to careers at expertise corporations.
For nearly seven years, Daniel Afekhume labored as a geoscientist within the oil and gasoline business in Nigeria and the US. However after transferring to Canada throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Afekhume determined to alter his profession path.
“The volatility within the oil and gasoline business, it is getting extra fast,” Afekhume stated.
“It is simply robust for me principally to do long-term planning for profession development alternatives.”
Afekhume took half within the EDGE UP program, led by Calgary Financial Improvement, which provides free coaching to employees transitioning from power to tech. Greater than 300 employees participated in this system.
For the previous two months, Afekhume has been working as a knowledge engineer at Neo Monetary, a monetary tech firm. He hopes to search out extra stability within the tech business.
“I wanted a recent begin. I wanted to maneuver my expertise, my talent set, to a different business, and the tech business was virtually a pure match for me.”
In accordance with industrial actual property and funding agency CBRE, Calgary had a 17.9 per cent development in its tech sector employment between 2015 and 2020. That boosted the metropolis complete to 46,700 tech jobs. With multinational corporations like Amazon Internet Providers (AWS) establishing store in Calgary, the town’s tech sector seems to be gaining momentum.
Expertise competitors
Vince O’Gorman, CEO of Calgary-based Vog App Builders, stated hiring amongst tech employers is extraordinarily aggressive. His firm has been hiring oil and gasoline employees with relevant expertise to the tech sector.
“There’s lots of people in there which have the information in venture administration and perhaps some technical background that’s transferable,” O’Gorman stated.
However with the oil and gasoline sector experiencing a growth as a result of value surges, O’Gorman stated it could develop into more durable to recruit power employees into tech.
Kris Learn, co-founder and head of expertise at Neo Monetary, agrees that regardless of the optimistic development in Calgary’s tech sector, hiring stays aggressive. In lower than 4 years, Learn’s firm has employed greater than 600 workers, however recruiting remains to be a problem.
“Everybody needs the most effective expertise. So, it is going to at all times be aggressive,” Learn stated.
Firms like AWS are turning to post-secondary faculties for recruitment. The corporate partnered with Mount Royal College in November 2021 to create a coaching program that put together employees for entry-level jobs in cloud computing.
The recruitment energy of bigger corporations like AWS could also be one other issue that makes it more durable for smaller tech corporations in Calgary to rent high expertise.
Transitioning expertise to tech
Felipe Moreno, 46, is a mechanical engineer by commerce, however for the previous 12 months he has labored as a technical analyst at Neo Monetary.
Moreno used to work at a sustainability firm that was concerned in tasks within the oil and gasoline business. He stated the abilities he gained in his former work are considerably just like what he does in his present tech job.
“It is only a totally different kind of downside fixing, utilizing computer systems and information to research issues, principally,” Moreno stated.
However the transition to working in tech is not at all times a breeze. Moreno stated the IT business is at all times altering, so employees like him have to be consistently studying new expertise.
Afekhume additionally stated the most important problem of transitioning out of the oil and gasoline sector was the variety of new instruments and applied sciences he needed to study.
“It’s essential to be up to the mark. So, it retains you in your ft, however the good aspect is that you just’re at all times studying … your perspective is at all times rising and broadening day by day.”