Big Oil's Talent Hunt

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But in the scramble for talent, companies have also begun looking for help in some unconventional places. One of them is the auto industry. On June 8, the International Association of Drilling Contractors teamed up with Ford Motor (F) for the first time, holding a career fair in Brook Park, Ohio, at a United Auto Workers union hall. It targeted employees subject to buyouts. About 400 engineers and skilled tradespeople—including welders, electricians, and repair people—attended the event to learn about jobs with Transocean (RIG), Noble Energy (NBL), Ensco (ESV), and Pride Oil (PDE). At least five have been signed up thus far, and more hires are planned.

Devon Energy (DVN) has been prospecting in another nontraditional area: academia. With a BS, MA, and PhD in geology, Erik Kvale had worked 19 years at Indiana University as a researcher and adjunct professor. He enjoyed his job, but saw opportunities in oil as the industry had revived in the past several years. "I needed a new intellectual challenge," says Kvale, 51, who joined the Oklahoma City-based company as a senior geologist in July, 2006. "Obviously salaries were another draw; I wanted to be able to retire at some point." Kvale says that he has boosted his $60,000 salary at Indiana University by more than 50%. Devon has also recruited engineers from paper mills in Canada to work at its oil shale facility in Eastern Alberta.

While it won't immediately fill the workforce gap, there is a resurgence of interest in petroleum engineering. One reason is that salaries are up. Last year it was among the highest-paid fields for college graduates at $68,000 per year on average. Nearly 3,700 undergraduate students nationwide enrolled in petroleum engineering programs for the 2007-08 academic year—the largest enrollment since 1986, though far from the 1983 peak of more than 11,000. At Texas Tech University, undergrad enrollment jumped from 60 students in 1991 to 406 today, says Lloyd Heinze, chairman of the school's Department of Petroleum Engineering. The average salary of Tech's 2007 graduates was just over $100,000. They have "the highest starting salary of any students on campus for the past five years," says Heinze.

Herbst is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in New York .