Did you fall into an energy career? You’re not alone.

How did you get into energy? Is it something you dreamed of as a kid, or did you stumble into it as an adult? During one of our Zpryme on the Grid podcasts with Mike Carlson of Siemens, we considered these questions. Mike said that many of the people he meets almost seem to “fall into energy” almost by accident.

To test Mike’s idea, I did a little survey ahead of ETS18 to see how folks found their energy careers. I had 91 energy professionals share their thoughts on the matter.

Few folks aspired to energy as kids

It seems nearly everyone wanted to do something else other than work in energy, from aspiring U.S. presidents to bee keepers to Solid Gold dancers, though the most popular childhood pursuit was by far an astronaut. This is not surprising since, for example, we don’t often see energy folk heroes. I’ve also never seen an energy-inspired cereal brand.

In fact, most folks who participated in the survey didn’t learn a career in energy was possible until after they entered the workforce (46%). Furthermore, 23% said they didn’t enter the energy space until they were at least 10 years into their careers.

For those 2% who learned about it early on—in elementary school or earlier—it was not necessarily a great experience. Well, maybe it was fun for kids, but certainly not for their poor parents:

“As a little kid I was fascinated by anything that produces light…I was so obsessed in elementary school that I experimented lighting up a room in our home, but nearly got electrocuted…I was rushed to the hospital. This incident did not scare me, but increased my curiosity to investigate what caused the electric shock…I knew what I wanted to be early in life.”

“My mom called out, ‘Come down right this instant’ as this headstrong second grader steadily climbed a utility pole to get a closer look at a transformer.”

Okay, so folks come to energy through various avenues, but ultimately was the path intentional? Nearly two-thirds of respondents, regardless of when they entered the industry or learned about it, felt that they ended up in energy almost by accident.

I know I would fit into that category. I got into energy after grad school when my future boss happened to see a manufacturing paper I had written for his wife’s organization sitting on the printer. He gave it a look, and thought “we do stuff just like this, but in energy.” Rick Nicholson then hired me into IDC Energy Insights, and I had the opportunity to start up the group’s “intelligent grid” practice. I leapt from economic development and manufacturing to energy from someone finding something on the printer.   

What can you do?

Falling into energy makes for some good stories, but how do we make the process more intentional? How do we get the best talent out there to want to come to energy? I hear these questions from people so many times in my work, and we hear so much about the need to bring younger, talented folks into energy.

The answer is simple: we must educate. Rather, you must educate. It is easy sometimes to say “the industry has to do a better job.” But we can all do something as individuals.

Get out there and talk about what you do. Most companies offer opportunities to do this, but I think it is also a personal initiative for folks. I love these stories from the survey about how someone reaching out influenced the career trajectory of students:

“For 10+ years, I was a professional guitar player with a focus on improvisational electronic music...Because of my interest in electronics, I went back to school in electrical engineering to focus on chip and circuit design. A rep from PG&E came to one of my EE classes to talk about an internship program they were offering…”

“The last place I ever thought I'd work was in the electric industry. While an electrical engineering undergraduate, the controls and microprocessor courses always were more motivating than...power systems. I worked my way through college in sales/customer service for a high-end A/V retailer. An electric utility was reinvigorating its industrial customer relationship management, and went out to recruit EEs with customer service interests…The rest, as they say, is history.”

HCR