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Seas of Opportunity: Recruitment, Growth, and Networking Episode 1
The newest episode of the Petromin Podcast features an exceptional guest who embodies the essence of maritime expertise and leadership. Chris Lawrence is a seasoned professional with a robust background in the maritime and offshore industries. He holds a Bachelor in Facilities Management and a diploma in nautical studies, laying a solid academic foundation for his diverse career.
Mr. Lawrence’s journey began as he spent five years sailing the high seas with Pacific Carriers on bulk carriers, honing his skills in the demand of maritime operations. Following that, he began his national service at the Republic of Singapore Navy, where he served for three years, gaining invaluable experience and insight into naval operations. His next decade was dedicated to capital offshore and marine, where he held multiple key roles including shipwright engineer and construction manager for a new direct lay barge. Mr. Lawrence was instrumental in the docking and undocking of vessels and managed various complex tasks such as blasting, painting, rigging and scaffolding.
Transitioning to a leadership role, Mr. Lawrence spent two and a half years as a marine manager with a company specializing in rigging, mooring, technical sails and load testing, further broadening his operational expertise. He then moved to POSH Semco, POSH Terrace, and Semco Salvage, where he worked for seven years as operations manager. Most recently, Mr. Lawrence has been at the forefront of talent acquisition for over six years, overseeing operations in Singapore and Indonesia. His work has spanned across marine, energy, subsea, FBSO conversion, marine salvage, renewables, ROV and offshore sectors. He has also initiated and expanded the permanent placement desk in the Asia-Pacific region, extending its reach to the Oceanic and European markets.
With such a rich tapestry of experience across different facets of the maritime industry, Mr. Lawrence brings a wealth of knowledge and insights. Join us as we delve into his fascinating career and the lessons he learned along the way.
Welcome to the Petromin Podcast. Thank you for being a part of this two-part series. We’ve got a lot of conversations going on recently, and we talked a lot about recruitment, right? I think one recurring point is the struggle in bringing new talent, and the right ones for the right skills.
Now, before I get into questions, maybe you can tell me a bit about all those diverse career opportunities you’ve had in the past.
Mr. Lawrence: So, I mean, growing up I was always taken care of well. My parents were always… Whatever I needed, I always had. I told myself I just wanted that independence, so then I decided to go sailing. When out there, you learn to survive, you learn to be independent. You live with different nationalities, different cultures, different languages. And that was also part of the studies I did in poly, and then I realized that it’s quite interesting to do something not so traditional. Everybody wants to be a doctor, or engineer.
When I went into the navy, I stayed in touch with the marine industry. I enjoyed being away from home for long periods, yet you get to come back, it’s not like you don’t have a place. And then something just drove me and I stayed on in the industry. I think along the way I just moved to different aspects of it within the same industry.
I’m curious, you started from the very beginning already in the naval industry. Was someone in the family in the industry or did this interest come about all on your own?
Mr. Lawrence: Actually, no. My dad was in the military, and he was all about systems, everything being right. I think that I just wanted to be on my own, to survive. Going out to sea was the easiest excuse to get that independence, and then it just built onto me, and I just loved doing what I was doing. The key thing is you meet a lot of people, you go to places, you get experiences you won’t get sitting in an office in the CBD where you see the same thing every other day.
True, true. Okay, so let’s move from that to how did you even come about joining the whole talent acquisition part of this industry?
Mr. Lawrence: So during my years, whenever I applied for a job, I never got a job applying on a job site. I never got a job applying on a website. I realized that it’s all about relationships, that gets you work. After working for a long time, in my job before the headhunting space, I traveled a lot, I traveled very heavily. I wanted a job that gets me more to home. I felt it was also about time that I gave back to the industry something. So I knew a lot of good people who were struggling to get work, and I also knew people that were looking for good talent, then I thought, why don’t I be that point? Even the company I joined at first, we didn’t do headhunting; we did marine crewing, subsea crew, ROV crew. Headhunting was something I always wanted to do, and then the opportunity came during COVID.
When COVID came, people had difficulty going offshore and people offshore had difficulty coming back. A lot of expats were going home, and there were a lot of locals who were out of work. And then I thought, there’s a big opportunity to tap on the local talent pool and get them to fill these jobs, because for the local talent, going home is taking a bus or taxi or MRT. For the expats, it’s a flight home, and it will take a long time to come back. Of course, we need expat talents because there are a lot of skill sets that we don’t know very well. But I think Singapore has come to a point in time where we have sufficient local talent that can step into these roles, so it was just to be that point of contact.
We started doing it, and I only focused on things I knew. So whenever I hired for someone, I always wanted to hire someone, if I was the hiring manager, who would I pick? And then I would choose someone like that and join up. So I didn’t do traditional recruitment where you just look at the CV, fits the job role, we go, no. It’s more of the package.
I hear a lot about not looking at the CV from you whenever I speak to you. You shared a bit about relationships, building relationships. So this is something we will speak about later, how do you build relationships, networking and things like that. And recently we also went to a whole networking session that was part of DP Asia, it was very nice to have you there.
Before we touch on that and the struggles of recruitment, what do you enjoy most about this part?
Mr. Lawrence: Oh, people, just connecting with people. You meet different people. Surprisingly I was at a networking event yesterday, first time I was there. I was meeting and talking to a lot of people, and I met this young guy. He’s a business development manager with a local company, and he tells me ‘Hey, you’re Chris’. I said ‘Yeah’, and he said ‘Hey man, I really appreciated how you wrote a good post about your mum, when your mum passed on early in the year’. I said ‘You read it?’ and he said ‘Yeah, it was quite touching how your mum used to come to the anchorage and climb up the ships and bring food for your crew’. I said ‘Wow, I didn’t expect it to have an impact’, he said ‘Yeah, I really respect that’. And I said ‘I really appreciate that you remembered me that way’.
So it’s really about people, it’s really getting to know different people, understanding the different challenges. When you’re coming from different parts of the world, from different industries, on different levels of hierarchy you have different challenges. It’s just to listen and understand, and listening is not my biggest strength. I always try to tell them what I want to say but head bosses along the years have always told me ‘Chris, you need to listen’. So I try very hard, and I think I’m getting there, I’m not there yet. But when you listen, you learn a lot.
So you’re a very people person, and maybe that’s why when I speak to you, I really enjoy our conversations because I am too a very people person. But that also comes with a bit of emotional baggage as well? When you have to turn down people who come to you for opportunities, has that ever happened before?
Mr. Lawrence: It has, but when I was in the headhunting space, I always said that I don’t have competitors. Every recruitment agency in Singapore is good, everyone has their own niche, everyone has their own strengths. So when someone comes to me and if it’s something I can’t do, I will go out and talk to all the rest and say ‘Guys, I have a good profile. Maybe you have a role. Why don’t you go and have a look?’ And people ask me ‘Chris, we are like competitors’. I say ‘No, you are not my competitor. My biggest competition is myself, nothing else’. So I guess there are times when you have to [turn people down] but I always have the alternative where there are other agencies that will be able to help you. That’s that hope people are looking for, to find that something.
I think that’s what the industry needs as well, not so much to see each other as competitors but to help the industry grow together. That’s something we will also talk about later. But let’s start with some of the questions I prepared for you beforehand.
So the very first question: what are the unique challenges you faced when you are recruiting talent for the marine industry?
Mr. Lawrence: I think it’s the perception, people’s perception. A lot of times, they just come into it because it’s a job or because it pays well. I always tell them that you need to look at the impacts, like firstly the company culture. The company you’re going to join, do you fit into the culture? It might be a great company, but then the culture might not fit you. It might be a not-so-great company, but the culture is fantastic, it’s not a massive company but it has a good culture and then you grow, you fit in. The kind of operations they do—in our industry, right, maritime is very wide. In the maritime industry, you can become anybody. So it’s to look at the kind of niche; certain companies do certain kinds of operations or deal with certain kinds of business. What is the niche and how is that going to help you along the way?
So I think these are key things that people need to look at, and not just look at ‘how much am I going to earn?’. When you’re coming into the industry, you want to grow, you want to develop yourself. Money you need to have, but money shouldn’t be your driving force. So I think that is the challenge, the reality of what you really want in that career.
I’m also curious from your point of view, did you think this batch of fresh graduates have very high expectations on what we want from our first job?
Mr. Lawrence: I think it’s just the way they are. Every generation is brought up a certain way, and things are not getting cheaper. So everyone is looking at ‘I’ve graduated, I want to be independent, I don’t want to rely on my parents, I want to be able to do something for them’. When they come in, they have this perspective that ‘I just want to make a lot of money, then I can give back, I can go on trips with my family’. But then they also need to understand that it’s about growth in the maritime industry. You must be willing to start from the bottom and really work your way up. I started out as a deck cadet, that’s like the lowest life in the food chain in the maritime industry, and to be where I am, I think it’s because during my generation it was just about working hard. Just work hard and it will happen. So it’s also the mentors people have that give them the wrong idea, and you need to demand it all, you need to listen to what you really want and not what the crowd wants.
So now that we’ve talked about the culture, how do you look at a person and feel like this person fits this company’s culture? Basically, what are the strategies that you use to match someone to the right role?
Mr. Lawrence: For me, firstly, it’s really their background, who they are as a person. As I always say, I don’t really look at the CV. A CV is there, a CV is a guide, and CV is just to see that you tick the list of the job description. But certain jobs have certain stress levels, certain jobs have certain ways of doing things. So when I was doing perm placement, I always tell people—there is a particular client I work with, massive company, really good company, I like them a lot. I always tell them, if you want to be rich, then this is not the company to come to. But if you want to have long-term growth, this is the company to go. So it’s also about making them understand what is it, what they’re going to get out of it, rather than ‘I just want a lot of money’. The money will come, but not in your first ten years.
Okay, so these are your strategies, right? What are the other trends you see out there in the recruitment world?
Mr. Lawrence: I think the trend now is, people want to join big names. It’s good to join big names, it looks good on your CV. But when you join big names because they’re big, your learning curve is not wide, so if you come in you do something, you only do this and you always keep doing this. And when you’re really good at it, you’re probably going to just be stuck doing this. If you join a smaller company, not a massive brand name, not a three-man company but a smaller setup, you will learn a lot. When I was a marine manager in a rigging company, I did everything from finance, BD, commercial operations, safety, procurement, and that’s when you learn, you get hands-on. So it’s really how they want to look at it. Some industries start with a very big salary. Not all industries start that way, and with the marine industry, it’s really about seniority, so money will come as you get more senior.
So we’ve discussed quite a good first part of the podcast about recruitment and how it is from your point of view. A lot of things I’ve been hearing in the industry is that there has been a struggle in finding new talent, there’s a shortage, do you agree with that statement?
Mr. Lawrence: I think there is a surplus, there is a lot. The issue is a lot of people expect new talent to come in, a lot of hiring companies will say ‘I want a guy that’s twenty-five years old, ten years experience’. You’re not going to get that. So it’s about the reality also. Some good companies have this management trainee program where they bring people in. The expats, especially the Dutch, they do it really well. I know guys who have worked in the company twenty years, they’ve moved around every department and then they finally find their call, and then they grow. They have a lot of management trainee programs in Singapore, but I think the retention is not good. What happens is they go through the program and then people leave at the end of it.
So I feel that companies, a lot of people look at just hiring. I think it’s more about how you want to retain, to understand why people go. NTU and NUS have a lot of maritime business courses, even poly [polytechnics] run courses, there are a lot. There’s a big pool of students out there, and a lot of them people only want to hire when they graduate. They should start to tap on internships. When you bring the internships, you get people in you understand, they understand your culture. Chances are when they graduate they will want to come back to you, because it’s like ‘I’ve already worked with them, I’m already familiar’. So a lot of people don’t want to take interns. I think internship is something, if they feel they have difficulty getting new talent, start working with government agencies, people like MPA, on all these internships. Companies do get some funding also, it’s not like you just have to pay. Then you pick and choose your talent.
Keppel Offshore and Marine did that, so when I joined I signed a bond for two years. I stayed on for ten years, why? Because along the way once you start to work, you enjoy the vibe, you enjoy the culture, you stay. People stay because they feel comfortable. So I think companies should look at that, invest in that rather than just only wanting to hire once they graduate. It’s not fair to the candidates themselves.
It’s also interesting to know this point of view as well, because just now I asked you, is it a problem with us, the new fresh graduates? But it could also I guess be an industry problem. So I think we’re talking a lot about jobs that are in office, but let’s talk about jobs that require physical labour. Do you think it’s harder to recruit people for those roles?
Mr. Lawrence: If it’s entry-level blue collar, you’re not going to get locals. It’s really foreign talent, bringing it in. Supervisory level, you might get local talent, but then how do you be a supervisor if you haven’t done it? I always feel that you need to walk the talk. In the company I’m in now, I’m in a new setup we call Intermarine APAC, we hire skilled blue collar labour. We bring skilled blue collar labour to the UK and we’re also looking at moving into the Australian market. This year alone we have tested three hundred and fifty-one people, and we only take in a hundred and thirty-one. So it’s not about a numbers game where we just send people and make money from the headcount. We really focus on the quality.
If you want to get good blue collar skilled labour, firstly you must be willing to pay. You cannot live like how the price was twenty years ago. Lucky for us, we have good clients that pay good money, and then we can give these guys that go there a better way of life. So finding them locally is hard in the maritime space, yes. In other industries, maybe no, you will be able to find. But in the maritime space, it’s really about foreign talent. And foreign talent also must never be considered cheap labour, because they make the biggest sacrifice: they leave home, away from their family, to come here to work under certain conditions. You know in Singapore you have good working conditions, it’s safe and all that, but the remuneration—does it make sense to go and come? A lot of times when they come out of the country, they pay big amounts to agents to get a job. This is something we don’t do at Intermarine, we don’t take any agency money, we don’t take a single cent from them. We get them assessed, we send them to work, they get paid, that’s it.
So I think it’s two sides of the coin. We are able to do that because we’ve got good clients, and likewise, employers that are struggling with this need to be fair in how they bring in. It’s challenging in Asia, but in Europe and all that it’s a different ball game because they already realized that you really need to value. Without these people, nothing’s going to happen.
I agree, and I think you also shared with me, putting yourself in their shoes and knowing how is it for them. We always complain that a lot of foreigners are taking our jobs away and things like that, but also not really knowing how it is for them. Maybe you want to share with our listeners how it was for you when you put yourself in the lorry and things like that?
Mr. Lawrence: When I work in the yards, sometimes I work late. So me being me, I just want to experience how life is. There was a book I read called To Kill A Mockingbird, and there was a phrase that said sometimes you need to put yourself in their shoes and walk around. So when I was in the yard, I wanted to learn. Also, I can’t speak Tamil, I learned it in the yard while talking to the guys. But if I speak Tamil now to them they’ll probably take their shoes out and slap me, so embarrassing that a guy like me can’t speak fluent Tamil. But I always try to do things to understand where they’re coming from.
My mum—whenever we had a big job in the yard, very hard job, when they finish my mum would actually go to Little India to buy sweets and bring back to give to these boys. And in the Indian culture, a lot of these boys are Indian, giving sweets in the morning is like good luck. For them, they feel that you treat us equally, you treat us fair, you give us that respect. Of course, we can’t compare like living conditions, you can’t give everything. But when they see that you’re trying to understand them, trying to accept them… When I used to go back in the night, firstly it was hard to get a cab out from Tuas, so when the lorry was going I hitched a ride, I sat behind.
How was it like when a guy is super tired, sitting at the back of a lorry, and then he has to travel maybe from Tuas and he’s probably staying in Paya Lebar? It’s a long ride and you’re sweaty and uncomfortable, you’re already tired and you’re going to wake up in the next six hours. So then I start to realize that okay, you need to understand how they are and don’t treat them as ‘I’m the boss’. You don’t treat them like slaves, you’re not a slave driver. They are also somebody’s son, somebody’s brother, somebody’s father. Once you understand that, guys will work hard for you. When I was in the yard, my boys worked for me. If I had a hard job, they will come and tell me ‘I’ll do it because it’s for you’. And up till now I still meet them, I still talk to them, we do catch up. A lot of them who came in as workers, farmers, fishermen, now they own companies, they’re managers. One is doing the same role I used to do in the yard, the department head. So I’m proud that I see the boys have grown from nothing with their struggles to where they are, and I think it’s also a blessing for us in a way that’s like giving back.
So yes, you need to understand. A lot of people complain about how they get drunk and sit in the MRT—you know when they come to Singapore, they easily have a ten thousand dollar debt that they probably will take a couple of years to pay. How easy is that? It’s not. Singapore was not built by Singaporeans, we were built by foreigners. All these buildings, these places that we have; we have Gardens By The Bay, we have Marina Bay Sands, all built by foreigners, not locals. So we need to appreciate them also.
And also, like you said, the offices that we’re even sitting in.
Mr. Lawrence: Correct! It’s not built by us. Even the carpentry is probably done by Malaysians, not by us.
I agree, I agree. Alright Chris, I think we have covered a lot of interesting topics and I’ve heard so much from you. I really want to keep the conversation going but unfortunately we have to wrap up Episode 1. We will continue where we left off in Episode 2 so please stay tuned!
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