The show for which I will be the featured guest is targeted to energy industry leaders, managers, supervisors, and human resource associates. Recruiting: The Rules Have Changed! will air November 8th and discuss how there are new considerations for how companies recruit in today's marketplace. The energy industry, as is the case with many industries, is facing a mass exodus of Boomers over the next five years so it is imperative that employers prepare for the change now yet they must understand that what brought employees in 10 years ago may not entice Gen X'ers and Millennials (Gen Y'ers) to join the natural gas and other energy industries.

There is some dispute about how much of a demand there will be for new employees and whether the supply will be there to meet that demand. On the one hand, about 80 percent of global oil and gas companies anticipate that there will be a shortage of petroleum engineers through 2011, according to management consulting firm Oliver Wyman. The American Petroleum Institute concurs with this pessimistic view as it believes that energy companies in the United States will need 5,000 more engineers by 2010. Yet those who have been following the industry for decades remember that as recently as 1982, more than 860,000 people were employed in the industry yet by 1998 that number had fallen to about 350,000.