CALGARY — Diana Wong Doolan had worked at Encana for 16 years when she lost her job in 2016, just one person among thousands laid off in a series of deep workforce cuts following a crash in oil prices.

Wong Doolan, a former reservoir engineer, was managing a portion of the company’s supply chain at the time, overseeing a team of 11 people that procured compressors, valves and other equipment used in oil and gas production. But despite her leadership credentials and years of experience, she was unable to find employment in oil and gas as the sector went through a prolonged period of drastic cost cutting. 

She eventually decided to apply her skills in the tech industry, and after a long transition process, last year she landed a job as an entry-level software developer at Calgary-based Benevity, a company that makes charitable-donation platforms. 

“The longer that things didn’t work out in terms of returning to oil and gas, because that’s where my experience and education was, the more I had to think about what alternatives were out there,” she said.

Wong Doolan isn’t alone. As of early 2020, around 60 per cent of displaced energy workers had found jobs in new industries, according to an analysis of LinkedIn workforce data. Manufacturing is the most popular destination for former energy workers, followed by digitally oriented industries like software development and IT services.

Those new placements come after years of retrenchment in oil and gas, leading to a tidal wave of layoffs involving tens of thousands of workers in Alberta and elsewhere. The total number of workers in the Canadian energy sector was slashed from 227,000 in 2014 before the oil price crash to an estimated 164,000 this year, according to the PetroLMI. 

That has left thousands of unemployed but highly skilled engineers, geologists and other professionals that many observers hope could form the foundation of Alberta’s burgeoning tech sector. In a speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce last year, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney called skilled workers the “missing piece to a sustained period of creative growth and diversification” in the province. 

In an effort to help displaced workers make the leap, companies, academic institutions and governments have introduced a host of programs aimed at preparing them for their new roles. Those include, among others, InceptionU, a non-profit organization, Edge Up, a program funded by the federal government’s Future Skills Centre, and Lighthouse Labs, a coding bootcamp. 

Still, despite growing public and private support, it remains a difficult road for many applicants to make the transition. It took Wong Doolan roughly five years to get hired for a software position at Benevity after being laid off from Encana (now called Ovintiv). In the intervening years she worked for a few other companies, including as an area manager at Amazon, while constantly networking and researching potential new fields of work, she said.

Wong Doolan eventually enrolled in Edge Up’s five-month “bootcamp,” from the end of May to October 2020, where she took full-time classes to gain the required skills for a new career in software. She would finish her schooling in the afternoon, then spend the evening with family, preparing dinner and driving her two sons to their extracurricular activities. At night she would complete her remaining homework and other assignments, often keeping her occupied until well after midnight.  

“Being a working parent, you’re always juggling,” she said.

The need to retrain—and hesitation around how long that retraining process might take—is likely causing other workers to delay shifting into new industries. According to a recent survey by the Conference Board of Canada, a perceived lack of skills was the single biggest impediment holding respondents back from entering the clean economy. The length of time that retraining might take was the second biggest concern, followed by a lack of information on the new industry and a lack of financing. 

Experienced and skilled workers like Wong Doolan are in high demand in Alberta, particularly in tech. A recent report by the Information and Communications Technology Council said employment in Alberta’s digital sector increased 9.4 per cent between February 2020 and August 2021, compared with a 0.7 per cent contraction in the rest of the economy. 

Some of those new hires have come from more traditional sectors like oil and gas. The Edge Up program has placed 113 applicants in areas like cybersecurity, cloud computing and digital marketing since its inception 18 months ago. Another 210 students are currently enrolled. 

The talent pool in Canada’s energy sector is exceptionally deep, program administrators say, but workers often need to have their skills recalibrated or expanded to fit into new roles. 

“There’s a bit of a skills mismatch,” said Jeanette Sutherland, director of Edge Up.

She said the movement of workers from traditional industries, particularly engineers and other skilled workers, is part of a generational shift toward newer sectors like cleantech. 

“We’ve talked about the cyclical shift that’s happened in the oil and gas sector for the past 30 to 40 years. And now, there’s been a structural shift,” Sutherland said.  

But competition for new tech jobs is fierce. The Calgary-based Applied Artificial Intelligence Lab, a program led by AltaML, has accepted roughly 17 per cent of applicants, administrators say. In its first year, the lab took in just 63 out of the 1,500 people who applied. The industry-led program accepts anyone from students to experienced workers and helps them gain the skills they need to shift into more tech-related positions.

The labour shortage in tech is largely due to a limited supply of experienced workers, which has led to a high churn rate among senior executives in the sector in recent years. 

“It’s a huge pain point for a lot of companies,” said Danielle Gifford, senior manager of AltaML’s lab. But she said those pressures will be eased as the sector recruits more senior workers. “I think that senior talent is going to come through. It’s just taking time to move through the system.”

As for Wong Doolan, she said the transition was ultimately a worthwhile experience, one that was driven by her interest in learning different skills and tackling new challenges for Benevity. She said her new role as an entry-level developer came with a pay cut, but she views it as a temporary sacrifice along a longer trajectory in a new sector.

“It’s kind of the first step in growing a career in the tech industry,” she said.

Correction: While the Applied Artificial Intelligence Lab program is based in Calgary, AltaML itself is not. This story has been updated.