Career development

A group of ConocoPhillips employees at a geoscience meeting

Today’s energy industry faces two key challenges: attracting a skilled work force that is equipped to do business globally and providing a work environment that attracts, develops and retains high-performing employees.

The continued success of ConocoPhillips centers on ensuring that we have a strong global workforce that can contribute the right skills, in the right places, to achieve our strategic objectives. As many experienced professionals approach retirement age, we are faced with the challenges – and opportunities – of attracting new talent to our organization.

All newly hired employees, at all levels of experience, are provided with training and development programs designed to optimize their career at ConocoPhillips. Our goal is to attract top-performing candidates into a supportive growth environment and to retain these individuals with challenging and satisfying work that meets their goals and exceeds their expectations.

You can realize unlimited growth potential at ConocoPhillips. Our innovative culture emphasizes continued personal and professional development that enriches your talent, stretches your horizon and moves you forward with your career. These programs vary across our worldwide locations.

Our workforce planning strategy includes actively increasing student interest via college recruiting, a strong internship program, scholarship support and a heavy focus on early-career development. We also have active programs and established relationships with selected universities from which we recruit students for a diversity of opportunities.

ConocoPhillips historically hires a significant number of our entry-level full-time employees from our intern pool. We encourage internships as a way for us to get to know students better, while helping students determine if the energy industry is where their true potential and talent can be released.

Many new graduates have the chance to participate in Early Career Programs that provide a flexible development framework to enhance and accelerate your career with us. During the program, you spend the first 1 or 2 years on development assignments and have the opportunity to be involved in challenging projects.

As an early career engineering or geoscience employee, we know that your career development is a top priority for you in the same way it is for us. Known as “Accelerate,” our multi-year development program will provide opportunities for you to maximize your development while directly contributing to business goals. You will be empowered to develop yourself personally and professionally and given access to the tools, projects and technical experts you need to achieve your objectives.

Accelerate provides you with a range of interesting and challenging technical assignments, an individual support network and underpinning technical and non-technical training to support your broader development. You will be able to drive your own development, will have challenging goals to strive towards and will have an individually tailored development plan outlining your personal aspirations – a great foundation for your future career with the company.

Join us to find out what it’s like to Accelerate your development.

We are committed to your personal and professional development and offer educational assistance to help you further your professional career – whether you want to enhance your business skills or pursue advanced professional or academic credentials.

Through the effective use of mentors, employees can receive career guidance as well as the opportunity to increase individual knowledge and skills needed to succeed.

ConocoPhillips offers a variety of classroom-based, core development programs specially designed to help individuals achieve personal growth and success in their careers.

ConocoPhillips was recognized in the 2011 and 2012 Global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) studies for creating a knowledge-driven organizational culture. In addition to our vast training and development resources, we also offer networking opportunities via communities, forums and clubs that encourage and facilitate knowledge sharing and personal growth.

We seek to attract and develop talent, build capability and pinpoint local and global leaders at ConocoPhillips locations around the world. To support this goal, more than 16 different functional-based Talent Management Teams (TMTs) have been created.

The goals of the TMTs are to help identify the company’s future business needs and assess the availability critical skill sets within the company. They also work to optimize the development of people with technical or highly specialized skills, so that this talent can be shared globally or regionally in order to successfully implement key strategies.

For employees whose skills are not represented by one of the TMTs, development goals are achieved by jointly working with supervisors through ConocoPhillips’ formal performance management process.

We firmly believe that the best way to maximize company performance is by investing in people. We also believe that employee development is partnership between each employee and their mentors, supervisors and managers. To that end, we have defined categories and characteristics of skills and competencies that we see – and expect to see – in successful leaders throughout our organization. These attributes include:

Leading Self

  • Takes Accountability
  •  Drives Performance
  • Makes Decisions

Leading Others

  • Communicates Effectively
  • Partners Collaboratively
  • Builds Talent and Teams
  • Empowers Others

Leading the Business

  • Thinks Strategically
  •  Demonstrates Financial/Quantitative Acumen
  •  Leads Change

"My proudest professional moments have been seeing the people I mentored and sponsored over the years develop in their careers. It’s a very rewarding feeling to have had a positive impact, however small, in helping people achieve their potential."

Michael Hatfield Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President, Global Technical Functions

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