Firms boost hiring efforts amid tight job market
How tight is the job market in Texas and particularly West Texas?
So tight that one energy services company is planning to host or attend 11 recruiting events in coming months to fill 55 jobs by the end of the year.
Milestone Environmental Services, an oilfield waste disposal company, will host one of them Wednesday in Beaumont, on the opposite end of the state from its West Texas operations. The rush of new jobs and new investments by companies in the Permian Basin has inspired headlines about restaurant employees being offered 401(k) plans and barbers making six figures a year. But representatives of Milestone say it isn’t just the oil boom that has made hiring more difficult.
“The local markets are saturated with interviews and job fairs right now from the industry, and we’ve just about bled the West Texas market dry,” said Glenna Pierpont, vice president for human resources.
The state’s unemployment rate fell to a record low of 3.5 percent in May while the unemployment rate in Midland was half that, 1.7 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. In Houston, the jobless rate has declined to a record low 3.2 percent. In the BeaumontPort Arthur region, there’s a bit more slack, with unemployment at 4.5 percent.
Founded in 1993, Milestone owns and operates seven oilfield waste management sites in the Permian Basin, the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas and Haynesville Shale in East Texas. It offers client companies disposal services of both solid wastes and liquid byproducts of petrochemical production.
It has announced two new ex
pansions so far this year, including plans detailed Wednesday for four additional injection well permits to give the company an additional 155,000 barrels per day of permitted injection capacity.
Pierpont said the company not only must fill new jobs well ahead of the facility’s expected opening later this year, but it will also need new recruits for the rest of its operations. Milestone is hosting four events and attending another seven sponsored hiring events in cities across Texas.
The company will be looking for operations supervisors, equipment operators, Articulated Dump Truck drivers, and oil and gas mechanics.
Mac Carheel, president of Carheel Consulting, which specializes in workforce development, said companies coming to Southeast Texas are probably going to find people with industry experience who might be persuaded to move for enough money. But employers must
also be prepared to reach out to people they might not have targeted before.
That includes communicating to people that companies need janitors and analysts just as much as they need operators.
“I tell companies all the time about the people we have here that are full of talent and might have potential but don’t show up because they don’t know about the offerings the industry might have for them,” Carheel said.