We are thrilled to share Jason Assir's discussion on the Oil and Gas Pitch Podcast with Warren Spiwak, hosted by the Oil and Gas Global Network (OGGN).
Jason, CEO of Energy Gigs, dives deep into his journey—from experiencing an employment hardship to founding a groundbreaking platform that connects job seekers with organizations in the energy sector. Energy Gigs isn’t just another job platform; it’s a game-changing solution for both professionals and companies, creating real opportunities and removing friction in the hiring process.
Video:
Key Highlights:
- The Birth of Energy Gigs:
Jason’s job loss experience sparked the idea for Energy Gigs, a freelance platform focused exclusively on the energy sector. The platform connects energy experts to just-in-time projects, temp-to-perm roles, and fixed-fee opportunities. - Flexible Hiring Solutions:
Organizations can hire talent for freelance, project-based, or full-time roles, testing candidates temporarily before committing to full employment. - Empowering Career Transitions:
Energy Gigs provides professionals with opportunities to pivot their careers—whether from oil and gas to geothermal or from traditional roles to consulting gigs—while leveraging their existing skills. - Community Building:
Energy Gigs is not just about jobs; it’s about fostering mentorship, offering learning opportunities, and creating a network of energy professionals who support one another.
Transcript:
Warren Spiwak
So I'm with Jason Assir with energy gigs. You know how many times we hear that term it's a gig economy. Well like you're definitely taking it to the next level.
Jason Assir
We're going all in whole log. About eight years ago I got laid off from an oil and gas consulting firm. I was working in information management around well containment and I got laid off around Thanksgiving and I didn't really know what to do. I didn't think I'd be able to hire get a job until February of the next year. So I started freelancing. I actually drove Uber first. I drove Uber first and then I.
Warren Spiwak
Dad is gigging into the max.
Jason Assir
yeah, I started freelancing because a friend of mine said hey, you should, if you have an mba, you should start freelancing. See if you can make it work. Started doing that but I couldn't find any work in the energy space. Couldn't do any work in well containment. Couldn't do any work in transmission, distribution, utilities. I'd also done some work in turnarounds downstream. There were no projects there. So that was the germ of the idea. Why don't we build an energy focused freelance platform Love that connects energy experts to just in time projects or hourly fixed fee temp to firm project opportunities.
Warren Spiwak
With this concept, does it even allow like W2 employment and this kind of thing?
Jason Assir
So we, we rolled out a jobs module. So we have a projects module, a jobs module. Employers can decide okay, I want to hire someone on a, on a freelance basis or I can post a job and then hire someone full time. Or if you wanted to test someone out, which we always recommend, like you know, someone can interview really well but they might not do the work well. So why don't you hire them first as a freelancer either on a fixed fee or you know, on an hourly model and then when you like them, convert them over.
Warren Spiwak
Anything you read when it comes to a gig opportunity allows you to, instead of looking at a really long job description to say I can fulfill this, to know me is to love me. But I don't even get the chance if we don't have a starting point.
Jason Assir
I mean everyone's, you hear it a lot, you see it a lot in LinkedIn or you know, people talk about how the job hiring process is broken. It's really fundamentally changed. Right? Like you could, you could, you can't go and work for Exxon for 40 years anymore. You know there's going to be a Riff or Shell like they're going to, they're going to lay you off at some point maybe, right? So people have wear different hats at different points in time. Like they might be a full time employee at one point in time, but they may transition over where they might get laid off and be a job seeker or they might decide from job seeker. I want to be a consultant. Like me. Like I'm still consulting now, eight years later. Before, all my work came from freelance platforms. Now none of my work comes from freelance platforms, but I'm hiring people from freelance platforms. Right, so you can wear different hats and then when you retire, like my father, power engineer, 50 years in the space, he doesn't want to retire. Like, my mom's like, get him out of the house. Right? Like he just wants to do a couple of projects maybe once a month, make a little bit of money and then go shot at the casino.
Warren Spiwak
You know, we sometimes get so indoctrinated to believe that opportunity and the jobs that we take have to be one thing. And this is really saying no. You could look and look at multiple different opportunities and some of them could just be part time, but you're not driving an Uber. You're leveraging your experience and your capabilities.
Jason Assir
That's, yeah, 100% right. Like, I mean, in Houston, any Uber you take, it could be an engineer behind the wheel. It could be someone with lots of skills and qualifications, but they don't, you know, they don't. Haven't found the right opportunity. But energy gigs would hopefully help. Help.
Warren Spiwak
That's powerful when it comes to differentiators. You know, you have the linkedins, you have all these different platforms for job hunters. Could you lay out some of the differentiators that were really important to you as you built this platform?
Jason Assir
So, I mean, we're about six months in since we've gone live with our mvp, our minimum viable product.
Warren Spiwak
Okay.
Jason Assir
So our first version of the product, we still have some, you know, user experience issues in that, in that, that's part of the game.
Warren Spiwak
Again, please show us where. Yeah, show us where we need to fill the gap.
Jason Assir
Yeah, that's right. Like so. But we have right now about 380 experts on the platform are going by. 3, 2 to 3 experts per week. We, we vet the experts to make sure that they're actually legit. They are real people, not bots, that they have energy experience or an interest in energy. And I think, you know, what we, our mission, besides obviously staying profitable and you know, you know, keeping an entity alive, is to help people move into new areas of the energy industry as the industry evolves. Yeah. So for example, we're seeing a lot of people in the oil and gas space wanting to get in a geothermal. Yeah, well, you know, like as for, I'd already proven that there's immediate transferable skills of like if you have fracking experience, like you can go into enhanced geothermal. Right. So like that's kind of what our mission is. Like we think about like you know, Appalachia or the coal industry, you know, where are they going to get their next job?
Warren Spiwak
There's different things where you have to have somebody that has their finger on the pulse to know how to navigate it. What I like about what you're doing here is you're saying these talents that might not be already in geothermal or wherever, these other talents, these other capabilities that professionals have could completely be leveraged in this new fast paced, super evolving industry and you're right there at the forefront of it.
Jason Assir
We're, we're trying. I, you know, I think we are working on building out a learning management module and there's a flag that we're going to be putting into the candidates profile where they can say they want to be a mentor. So if you think about the platform and what we're going our roadmap, you know, you got the opportunity to learn new things, opportunity to find mentors, projects. And with projects being sort of on ramp into a new career and then jobs. Right. So like there starts to become sort of a way for you to figure, start planning out your career of like and reverse engineering how you get there more. And that's, that's sort of the, that's the vision. We're still early days, you know, it's well but yeah, that's great.
Warren Spiwak
I mean this is where it all happens when it comes to sitting down with a prospect and I, and now I know yes, candidates are going to be like, oh my God, this is so great. I think, I think it's just very intuitive why this is such an obvious play for the potential prospect employee that is the candidate. But when it comes to the organizations that you're talking to, what are the issues that you mention? Usually in that first two to three minutes where you're talking to them, where they're saying put me on the platform, I'd like to start looking through these individuals.
Jason Assir
So I think A is like are they qualified? You know, are the people we're looking at, are they truly energy experts? That's, that's something that we do and that's why we have a wait list on Both sides of the.
Warren Spiwak
Wow, that's great.
Jason Assir
I think the other one is, do we have the depth of candidate, like the roster? And that honestly is something we're working on. Right. Like we lost a project for a capital project manager role for a brownfield capital project. We didn't have enough people in our database to fill that role, and so they went somewhere else. Right. So that, that's just teething pains. As we grow, as we scale, we'll get to that. You know, we'll get there. But I think the real advantages is like, for example, Burns McDonnell, you can hire a really quality engineer engineering firm to do work for you. But what if you just need one engineer and you don't want to pay the hall. The all the fees, most of those fees of which go to the firm, not to the expert. Well, then you can use our platform. You know, if you just had like a feasibility study that you needed to have done or a job safety assessment done by someone, you know, who has depth of expertise. Maybe retired from Exxon Mobil.
Warren Spiwak
Sure.
Jason Assir
Right. Like you can just hire that one person versus hire the full firm. I think one story I think that we're, we're kind of proud of is, is we. We helped place a former, I think, Schlumberger drilling supervisor. He wanted to stay closer to home. He, he was looking at oil and gas, but he also, this opportunity came up with a geothermal startup called Bedrock Energy out of Austin. Oh. They decarbonize buildings. So we, we had done a search for him, helped them find someone, find this person who was an oil and gas drilling supervisor to, to just work from home and go, you know, work on site in Austin and. And manage the drilling operations of a project. Yeah, that was, that was really cool. I mean, it's a, it's a direct.
Warren Spiwak
Oil and gas to geothermal and it's proof of concept. So if you're interested, if you want to learn more about energy gig, reach out to Jason. Is there a website that you want?
Jason Assir
Yeah, Energy gigs dot com. So G I G S Energy gig. Plural. Right. Dot com. Yeah. Or hit me up on LinkedIn.
Warren Spiwak
Thank you so much.
Jason Assir
Appreciate it. Yeah, pleasure meeting you too.
Warren Spiwak
Terrific.
