Why a maritime recruiter is spending the week at Gastech

Recruitment is easy to think of as a business that begins when a vacancy appears. Michal Golab sees it differently.

Golab, co-founder and managing director of maritime recruitment specialist SeaMarque, is attending Gastech 2026 in Bangkok with three straightforward priorities: reconnect with existing clients, meet new people and learn more about the industries his business recruits for.

That matters because specialist maritime recruitment depends on context. A job title rarely tells the whole story. The right technical superintendent, marine manager or offshore executive may need a particular combination of vessel experience, engineering knowledge, geography, leadership and commercial judgement.

Recruitment starts before the vacancy

SeaMarque describes itself as a global maritime talent search business built around a consultative approach rather than simply forwarding CVs. Its work covers commercial and technical shipping, marine, offshore and senior-level appointments, with services including permanent and interim recruitment, executive search, talent mapping and salary surveys.

The company says it proactively searches for difficult-to-find candidates, conducts pre-screening and interviews, and supports both clients and candidates through the hiring process. For a small specialist firm, that means the quality of its network is central to the product.

Gastech is therefore useful for more than collecting business cards. The event's Shipping & Marine exhibition brings shipowners, port operators, technology companies, service providers and other parts of the maritime energy supply chain into the same venue. For a recruiter working across those sectors, the conversations help explain where demand is moving before that demand becomes a formal job brief.

Seventeen years across maritime and engineering recruitment

SeaMarque says Golab has more than 17 years of global experience in maritime and engineering recruitment, including work with major recruitment businesses in the UK and Singapore. His focus has included technical, marine and operational roles across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific.

That background is reflected in SeaMarque's current activity. The business is recruiting internationally across technical and operational maritime leadership, including roles connected to LNG and LPG, offshore vessels and ship management.

For Golab, the value of being in Bangkok is that those markets are visible in one place. Existing clients are here. Potential clients are here. So are the technologies, vessel operators and energy projects that will shape the next round of hiring.

Why this matters for recruitment

The strongest recruiters in specialist industries need to understand more than recruitment.

They need enough knowledge of the market to know why a role exists, what is changing inside the client's business and which experience actually matters. They also need to know the people before a search begins.

That is why Golab's reason for attending Gastech is relatively simple. He is not here with a product to demonstrate. He is here to listen, reconnect and understand the market better.

For SeaMarque, that is part of the recruitment process itself.

The Stratawire is reporting from Gastech 2026 in Bangkok.