BY ANDREW STATTER
We’ve long seen the trend of the energy industry hiring talent from outside. At the start of the renewable energy boom in the mid-2010s, scores of overseas developers set up shop in Japan when there was still a small talent pool.
Developers were typically hired from sales roles outside the industry or talent coming from real estate. Engineers and project managers came from working on different types of infrastructure or conventional energy into renewables. Finance was another big area where talent left banks and advisory to fill demand in private equity investors and developers.
The trend still continues – in forecasting, trading operations, and asset optimization – where we see an increase in demand for people with machine learning and data science backgrounds. In recent years, however, we’re seeing the opposite trend – an increasing appetite for a broad range of energy professionals from a wider industrial clientele.
From data center developers to major power consumers to insurance firms, talent is being poached from traditional and renewable energy players into the broader industrial space.