Schlumberger’s North America recruiting team hosted a selection of universities, including Rice University, Texas A&M, the University of Houston, and the University of Texas at Austin for a 1-day Engagement Workshop at its Sugar Land Campus facility located in Sugar Land, Texas. The participants took a tour of some of the different facilities housed at the campus, and Leila Otoso, a field engineering recruiter at Schlumberger, led the sessions.
Freshmen to junior level students from several engineering backgrounds participated in the workshop and were able to see firsthand Schlumberger’s technologies and equipment. The students were also able to engage with experts and discuss potential future career paths with them.
“As a recruiter, I have the opportunity to change people’s lives. I’m able to informally coach these students and help them understand how they can better develop themselves. Programs like these workshops allow me to get to know these outstanding people and expose them to different experiences all while uncovering their hidden skills. I’m also able to help guide them to their perfect fit when it comes to their career choices,” said Otoso.
The first Engagement Workshop was held in March with 15 students and the feedback was extremely positive. Students were able to observe Schlumberger’s work environment while being able to get creative and try their problem-solving techniques.
The tour started with a visit to the company’s Conveyance and Surface Equipment Center, which develops products and systems primarily for its Wireline, WesternGeco, and Artificial Lift segments.
The next stop was at the Test Facilities Center, where the students tracked failure analysis procedures and investigated failures in equipment, similar to a forensics expert looking for clues.
This was a favorite among the students. Kelsey Kalber of Texas A&M said, “I especially enjoyed the tour of the failures analysis lab. It was a fantastic experience for me because I learned quite a few of the processes that failed materials go through in order to discover the equipment’s flaw and how to prevent the equipment from failing again in the future.”
The students also had the opportunity to visit the Houston Formation Evaluation (HFE) Center where the development, manufacturing, and sustaining of formation evaluation tools are done. Here, the students were able to see key products and services from Schlumberger’s HFE Wireline and Drilling & Measurements segments. These segments provide formation evaluation technology to other segments at Schlumberger that support nuclear magnetic resonance, resistivity and nuclear products, and logging-while-drilling technology used to acquire high-quality data for geosteering and formation evaluation.
The last stop was at the recently renovated Genesis Rig where tools are tested and developed to measure real-time formation pressure and provide accurate formation evaluation and geosteering.
University Engagement Workshops are an initiative to attract top talent from some of the best engineering schools in the country. They offer companies a way to engage with students and show them the company culture.
Arthur Belkin of Rice University said, “Through this program I was able to learn an incredible amount of information in just one day. I got an in-depth understanding of what it is like to work in the oil and gas industry. Particularly, I gained extensive knowledge about working at Schlumberger as a field engineer, which absolutely seems an exciting path for me to take.”