青年职场成功的必备技能

Y oung Professionals’ Skill Sets for Success

青年职业成功的必备技能

By Bob Barba, Lupo Guerrera24 Feb 2016

An Energy Career Compass

Bob Barba, Integrated Energy Services

After graduating from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, I spent 6 years in the US Navy and decided to move on when my obligation was over. After finishing my MBA, I began to look for a job. With an Annapolis degree, 6 years of management experience, and an MBA, I had numerous job offers from a wide variety of companies. In 1981, the oil and gas business was in full swing and many firms were hiring. The process of searching for and producing oil and gas was fascinating, and it called on a lot of the skill sets that I had acquired in my career.

从美国Naval毕业后，我花了六年时间在美国海军服役，服役期满，仍然选择继续。当完成了我的MBA，我开始寻找工作。凭借一个学位，六年的管理经验，一个MBA学历，我拿到了很多公司的职位offer。1981年，正式油气行业的繁荣时期，许多公司都在招人。在油气行业求职是非常的诱人的，其要求很多技能，而这些恰恰是我在之前的职业生涯中所获得的。

The job Schlumberger offered me provided a unique work environment and paid better than most of the jobs I was being offered by other industries. The position came with my own logging truck and crew of two operators. Each job was a technical and logistical challenge to accomplish successfully. I was able to work with oil and gas operators directly and

received an excellent education in how a critical portion of the business ran.

Going the Extra Mile

Over the course of my career, I have found that the traffic on the extra mile is pretty thin. It is possible to survive most of the time without going the extra mile, however, your chances increase significantly if you constantly strive to be the best at what you do. The ―only‖ constant I have observed in the industry is change, and adapting to change requires a constant effort. This involves attending a lot of conferences and staying current with new technology. When you are self-employed, this often requires a significant investment of time and money.

As an employee, it is often difficult when management cuts back on

―nonessential‖ expenses during slow periods. The attendance at the 2015 SPE Annual Meeting was a good example as many firms did not allow their people to go even though the conference was in Houston, where travel expenses would be minimal. These events are critical to maintaining technical momentum, and I would submit that engineers should strive to attend even when their short-sighted companies refuse to pay their expenses. The best investment you can make is in yourself.

I often see an attitude among many students in my classes that they need to be familiar with only the job they currently have. But when trends in the industry change, if you do not have an appreciation of the technologies involved outside the current job, it is easy to get caught fat-footed. It often requires effort above and beyond what is required for your job to maintain relevancy when things change.

The last 10 years have been one of the most challenging periods in the industry to date. When I started teaching fracturing schools in 1993, a significant effort was needed to create the first school. During the 2009 downturn, the industry was focused on more economical methods to maintain profitability and I retooled the fracturing schools to focus on refracturing. This did not last long though, as the shale boom got into full swing within the next 2 years. To maintain relevance, it required a significant effort to retool the course to focus on unconventional reservoirs. One major client hired me full time to optimize their fracture treatments in the Marcellus, and the first order of business was to get the company up to speed on the technology. Even though this was an important project for my client involving several billion dollars, they would not cover my relatively minor expenses to attend unconventional conferences. Nonetheless, I chose