Walking through the valley of the shadow of a recession, fear no layoff

Oilweek — Nothing really prepares an employee for a layoff. Even when it seems like a distinct possibility, a person tends to cling to hope or, at least, to the most likely scenarios formulated to deal with the uncertainty. “I was surprised,” Andrew Page (not his real name) says of his layoff from Petro-Canada in September following the Suncor merger. “I expected a relocation to Fort McMurray, or that I’d get lucky and perhaps it would be a demotion, but that I’d get offered a position here in Calgary.”

It turned out neither of these scenarios were offered to Page. Instead, the veteran project engineer, who’d spent the last number of years focused on the oilsands, was offered a fly-in position at Suncor’s Firebag 3 on a 10-day-in/4-day-out rotation.

He’d already decided with his family that if offered a relocation to Fort McMurray, he would say no. Just six months earlier, they’d pulled their 11-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter from school in Denver, Colorado, when Petro-Canada repatriated all its staff back to Calgary. The Pages wanted a more stable existence in Calgary.

And yet, this curveball took Page a week to consider before declining. That left only one other option, a severance package that, for whatever reason, wasn’t immediately offered.

“When a severance package was eventually placed on the table, I accepted it. To be honest, it was a great relief,” Page says. The package was generous, especially considering he’d only been with Petro-Canada for three years. Before that, he worked on various contracts for more than six years. That was a highstress, long-hours line of work he gladly traded for employment with Petro-Canada, which provided a much better family and work balance.

When a senior director for human resources handed Page his severance package and provided a brief formal explanation of the layoff, he also introduced Page to a human resources consultant brought in to help employees transition out of the company and, hopefully, into new employment as quickly as possible.

“Jennifer sat down with me and did her best to soften the fall,” Page recalls.

The consultant also had a lot more to offer besides a pep talk. She had Page come in to their consulting offices for a series of seminars and workshops attended by others who were laid off and looking for work. The seminars focused on a variety of topics from money management to resumés to current interview dress codes. (IT interviews, apparently, call for a different look than engineering interviews.)

Along with providing links to various Internet job boards and a list of placement agencies, Page got an opportunity to practice interviewing. Armed with a list of questions typically asked by an engineering firm, he paired off with different people in a workshop to practice their delivery.

“I feel the seminars and the support offered by [the consultant firm] turned what is normally a frightening experience into, in my opinion at least, an enjoyable one,” Page says. “At the seminars, you see and meet people in the same situation, so the ice is broken and there’s some commonality. You exchange ideas on who’s busy and what’s happening in the market. It’s amazing that for somebody like myself, who has 18 years of experience, how much you can still learn and pick up from that.”

Of course, the big lesson Page quickly learned was on the importance of networking. After sprucing up his resumé, he passed it along to a friend working with engineering and consultancy firm AMEC. Within a month of being laid off from Petro-Canada in mid-September, Page interviewed for and accepted a position with AMEC at a better salary than he enjoyed at Petro-Canada, though without the long-term benefits.

“Having somebody that can pass on your resumé is really almost like passing the initial screening interview,” he says.

As for lessons learned, Page says, “Friendships are very important to maintain in this industry. How you conduct yourself day to day. I’m 42 years old, so I have another 10 to 15 years in oil and gas hopefully. I expect to see two more downturns and the possibility of being laid off again. So maintaining those friendships is really important.”