So how do you find out which drilling rig is hiring? Frankly, that depends on two important things: who you know and what kind of job you are looking for.

If you already have some experience working on an oil rig, you should already know some people. Go talk to them and let them know what you are looking for. Don’t be shy. Don’t feel embarrassed. If you cannot do something so simple, you do not deserve to get any oil drilling rig jobs. You never really know when one of your ex-colleagues, ex-bosses or acquaintances might be able to help you. Just remember that what goes around comes around. If they try to help you, make sure you pay them back one day.

Once you get that out of the way, it is time to get down to the nuts and bolts of the drilling rig job search. How you find a drilling rig that is hiring depends on whether you want an offshore drilling job, a deep water oil drilling job or a land drilling job. There are differences in how you approach each type of job search.

Searching for roustabout jobs on an oil platform that is located in shallow waters just off the coast is fairly easy and passive. Many of these oil rigs have day-rate vacancies for entry level jobs and often have some designated point and time where they pick up workers. Get there early so that you are at the head of the crowd and you have a good chance of getting picked. How do you find this place (and the pickup time)? Just ask around the docks and your state’s unemployment office (assuming there is offshore drilling in your state).

Searching for land drilling rig jobs is a lot more tedious but not too difficult either. You need your own transportation and a good map of your state. After that it is just a matter of driving around looking for oil fields and talking to the guy in charge of the field or rig. Be persistent. Sometimes the oil patch you visit has no job vacancy for you but the next door oil field may have plenty of work.

Looking for offshore drilling rig jobs in deep water is a lot more complicated. However, it can be worth it because they usually pay the most. If you are fresh out of high school, have no seagoing experience and no hard labor experience, you probably do not have a chance. But if you have ever worked on a trawler as a fisherman, a sailor in the Coast Guard on Navy, or as a laborer in a construction gang, you have a decent chance of getting in as an entry level roustabout even though you do not have directly relevant experience.

One way of finding jobs on these deep water drilling rigs is to hang out around the heliports in your state. Because the rigs are usually far offshore, most drilling rig companies transport their workers to and from their offshore rigs using a helicopter. An important thing to note is that these tours of duty are usually two weeks on and two weeks off, i.e. the workers work two weeks straight without a break and then get the next two weeks off. Like most men in difficult jobs, after they get back to dry land many of them will unwind in the nearest bar. This bar is probably near the heliport or airport, so hang around, listen in on the conversations and figure out who you should talk to.

Are there other ways of finding out which drilling rig is hiring? Sure there are!

So how does a man get oil rig jobs with no experience? Well, if you really have absolutely no experience – never worked at sea, never worked in construction, never worked on a land oil rig – you can only start at the bottom. A slow, steady and sure way is to prepare yourself by spending a year or two on each of the jobs mentioned above. It earns you relevant experience and it toughens you up for a real job offshore on an oil rig.

Of course, you may prefer the less certain shortcut of trying for roustabout jobs vacancies on oil wells in shallow waters near shore. In the Gulf states where there is a lot of offshore oil drilling, there are offshore oil rigs which operate near land. Such oil rigs sometimes hire temporary workers on day rates during periods of high activity. All that the oil service contractor needs from such temp oil workers is a strong back, the ability to follow instructions and the ability to swim so that they do not drown if they fall off the boat transporting them. In many cases, the contractor draws these workers from the state unemployment office. It is a good way to gain much needed job experience on an offshore oil well and can get you much needed contacts for more permanent employment. However, if you are not a resident in a Gulf state, this option may not be open to you.

Roustabout jobs on land provide a different experience from oil rig roustabout jobs offshore. Land-based oil rigs are usually smaller operations than offshore oil rigs. Nevertheless, there are still many features in common between the two, and getting experience on an oil well on dry land can provide valuable skills when working offshore. If you supplement it with job experience on a trawler or Navy or Coast Guard sailor, you will have a much better chance of getting hired for entry level rig jobs compared to someone who just graduated from high school.

Yet another alternative is to gain some kind of useful skill that can be transferred to an offshore oil rig. One such example is scaffolding. In a construction yard, the basic hourly rate is around $4 to $7, and you have to work 12 hours or more. Take this skill to an offshore oil rig and you can expect to earn somewhere around $55,000 a year. If you have a head for heights and are willing to slave away for a year or two to gain the needed job experience, this can be a good option.

Trade skills are also another path on to an offshore oil rig. There are posts for welders, electricians and mechanics on board an offshore oil platform. It helps if you have worked on a land rig before, but actual offshore experience is often not necessary. You can make around $55,000 to $60,000 a year, which is about double the wages on land. However, one disadvantage of such jobs is that career promotion prospects are limited. A common roustabout can work his way up the ladder to roughneck, derreck hand, assistant driller and driller. An experienced driller on a deep water oil rig can expect to make $100,000 a year or more. On the other hand, trade skills tend to be easier to transfer between land and sea, so it all evens out.

There are many paths to oil rig jobs offshore when you have no experience. What is important is your determination and for you to keep an open mind.

First, there are the usual ways which most job seekers use – scanning jobs advertisement section of the newspaper, looking on the internet and posting their resume on job boards like Monster. These techniques have the same pros and cons, namely, that you will get the same results as everyone else doing it. In good times, everyone will get the same above average results and most job seekers will eventually get hired for oil rig vacancies. In tough times, everyone will get the same mediocre results and most job seekers will remain unemployed. If you are happy getting the same results as everyone else, you can stop reading here.

Second is networking, i.e. talking to anyone and everyone you know. Open your mouth and tell them that you are looking for drilling rigs jobs. Job seekers who need to be told this probably do not have any connections with someone in the oil and gas drilling industry. Nevertheless, if you put in enough work to talk to enough people, someone will know someone who knows which drilling rig is hiring and will be able to give you a reference or recommendation. If you cannot find at least a hundred family members, friends and acquaintances to talk to, you probably do not want to find an oil rig job badly enough. On the other hand, it is also fair to say that if you like talking so much, maybe a career in sales or politics may also be suitable for you.

Third is a bit special. If you only want oil rig employment on dry land, then go fishing for oil rigs. An important point is that you need to be living within driving distance of oil fields. If there are no oil fields in your state, this method does not work. Anyway, what you need to do is get a detailed map of your state. Draw up a search grid on the map and start driving around. If you already know the location of some oil fields, visit them first. If not, search each grid on the map one by one. When you find an oil field, go to the person in charge of each oil rig and talk to him. Ask him if he has any oil rig vacancies. Note that on some oil fields, every oil well is owned by or operated by the same company, so you may only need to talk to one person. On other oil fields, there could be more than one owner or operator and you could have several chances to find oil rig roustabout jobs. This is really a brute force method, but it often lets you find oil rig vacancies before they get advertised.

Fourth is another brute force method – mass submission of your resume to oil companies and oil drilling contractors. There are businesses which have a large list of the contact numbers and email addresses of the rig managers and HR officers of the oil companies and oil service contractors (or so they claim). Basically, you pay them to submit your resume to all the companies that may be hiring for drilling rigs jobs. They do not normally charge very much – their rates usually range from $20 to $100 depending on the company and the exact services you pay for. On the down side, while there are some companies which are effective, others are either incompetent or outright scams. Using these resume mass submission services is easy and can definitely work, but unless you are lucky you could blow a whole lot of cash before finding a reliable company.

Fifth is to cold call. To do this well, you need to find the Yellow Pages for each state and look for the contact numbers of all the oil companies, drilling contractors and service companies. Pick up the phone, call the company and find out how to reach the HR department, then call HR and ask if they are hiring for oil rig roustabout jobs or any other job on their oil rigs. It is a brute force method much like the fourth method above, except that you are doing all the work yourself. On the other hand, all you pay is the phone bill. You should be able to get your state’s Yellow Pages for free (or cheap). Your local library should be able to help you get the Yellow Pages for other states (if no one in your state is hiring).

Finding oil rig vacancies is not rocket science. However, if you want to get extraordinary results and find (roustabout) job vacancies that have not yet been advertised, it can require brutally hard work. Nevertheless, those prepared to put in the effort will find an honest job that pays as well as many white collar jobs.

Most of the Canadian oil rigs are located on land. Technically anyway. The reason most oil drilling only happens in winter is that most of the oil fields are somewhat marshy. Oil drilling contractors can only drill effectively in winter, when the ground is frozen solid. Unfortunately, that means you will work in the cold and snow most of the time. Because the sun only comes up for a short while each day, most of your work will also be done in rather dim light.

Worse yet, Canadian oil workers usually work on an hourly or daily rate, which means many oil workers have to look for other work in fallow months. That does not mean Alberta oil rigs (or Saskatchewan oil rigs) do not work at other times of the year. There are still oil rigs located on dry ground, and working on these oil fields can get very hot in summer.

Drilling rigs in Canada are usually in rather out-of-the-way spots. Some oil fields have become sufficiently established that small towns have grown up nearby, but there are many oil fields where the workers have to stay in company-provided camps. These camps include sleeping quarters, kitchen and dining room and a laundry (but not necessarily any form of recreation).

While some oil rigs remain fixed in position, others move around a fair bit. Oil rig crews follow their rigs around, which can sometimes mean extended periods of time far away from home. Transport between home and rig is usually not provided, although transport between rig and camp is. Like in the US, Canadian oil rig workers work 12-hour shifts, some of it at night. Unlike the US, Canadian tours are two weeks on and one week off. Considering that workers are paid hourly or daily and that most of the drilling only happens in winter, this is not a bad thing.

Unlike offshore oil rigs which can have hundreds of workers, drilling crews on Alberta oil rigs consist of twenty people at most – three to four crews of four or five people. There is the driller, derrick hand, motor hand, floorhand and leasehand. In the US, the floorhand would be called a roughneck and the leasehand a roustabout. Like the US oil industry, promotions can occur rapidly. The climb from leasehand to rig manager (toolpusher) can happen in just eight years.

Like most of the rest of the world, oil companies do not usually own or drill individual oil wells. Instead, they hire drilling contractors who own and operate the drilling rigs which do the actual work. Those looking for oil rig jobs on Alberta oil rigs (and Canadian oil rigs in general) would do well to remember this.

Floorhand/Leasehand

Leasehands (roustabouts) are the lowest ranked members on the drilling crew. They perform most of the general labor on the site, all the way from loading and unloading trucks to digging ditches and scrubbing and cleaning equipment. Floorhands (roughnecks) work on the rig floor.

Unlike the US where a roustabout can learn everything on the job, Alberta and other Canadian states require even workers in entry level rig jobs to take special training course before starting work. This is in addition to the First Aid and H2S Alive (hydrogen sulphide training) certifications. Some employers have additional requirements, e.g. certifications in Fall Arrest and/or Waste Hazardous Material Information System.

In Canada, there are actually recommended wages set for workers in the oil industry. For leasehands, the hourly wage is $23. For floorhands the hourly wage is $25.25. When working away from home, there is even a recommended living allowance – $50 a day when a camp is provided and $140 a day when a camp is not provided.

Rig Technician – Derrickhand/Driller/Motorhand

In Alberta, the motor hand, derrick hand and driller are classified as rig technicians. These rig technicians have to be licensed by the Alberta government. Before licensing, they have to work as apprentices at least three years (1,500 hours of on-the-job training and 120 hours of technical training each year). Recommended wage rates are $27.50 per hour for the motor hand, $32.25 per hour for the derrick hand and $38.50 per hour for the driller.

Employment on oil rigs in Canada is just as hot as in the USA. However, the physical and regulatory environment is a bit different.

NB: Wages are quoted in Canadian currency and meant to be a rough guide. Actual wages depend on the employer.

Despite being a far cry from the peak of $140 per barrel in 2008, this is quite sufficient to drive investment in new oil wells by oil companies (oil needs to sell for $30 to $40 per barrel before oil companies are willing to drill new oil fields). That means employment on oil rigs is set to grow.

You may be wondering where to find jobs on oil rigs. The best places are newer oil fields which have a long term future. In the US, this is mainly the deep water oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. In Canada, it would be the Sasketchawan and Alberta oil rigs.

For American oil workers, there is great advantage in working on offshore oil rigs. Besides the better long term opportunities, it is possible to claim tax breaks (both federal and state level) for employment on these oil rigs as they are often located in international waters. Of course, you need to consult with a qualified accountant or tax lawyer for the details. It may also be possible to claim for transportation costs between home and heliport as well as equipment costs (e.g. boots and hardhat).

Note that Americans moving to Canada to find oil rig employment and vice versa should adapt to differences in job title and licensing requirements. An American oil rig roughneck is a Canadian floorhand, while an American oil rig roustabout is a Canadian leasehand. A Canadian roughneck is a highly qualified worker, roughly the equivalent of a motorhand, derrick hand or driller in the US.

In terms of qualifications, a Canadian oil worker needs to have the H2S Alive (hydrogen sulfide safety) and first aid certifications before he can get a job on an oil rig. In contrast, offshore employment on (US) Gulf oil rigs usually require the HUET (helicopter underwater escape training), first aid and firefighting certifications.

Job schedules also vary between the US Gulf and Canada (Alberta). Although oil rigs operate 24-hours a day and workers have to work 12-hour shifts, many US workers on offshore oil rigs work on a 2 weeks on/2 weeks off rotation or 3 weeks on/2 weeks off rotation. On the other hand, Canadian oil workers usually have a 2 week on/1 week off rotation. Oil rig employment in the Gulf tends to slow down in the hurricane season (June – November), whereas in northern Canada the strongest surge of employment on oil rigs is in winter (November – March).

The world runs on oil and demand will continue to grow as the economies of China, India and Asia become more developed. There will be more and more opportunities for employment on oil rigs both now and in the future. Add the fact that work on oil fields pay well and you can see that the future is bright for workers in the oil and gas industry.

Mind you, we are only talking about entry level rig jobs here, not management or skilled positions. An experienced driller who can drill a deep sea well should be able to earn $100,000 a year. For management, $100,000 a year is definitely on the low end. A new petroleum geologist or petroleum engineer can make around $80,000 to $100,000 right out of college.

But what if you not only do not have a college degree, you also do not have a trade skill? What if all you have are your guts, a good attitude and a strong fit body? Does it mean you have not chance of getting to work in the lucrative oil and gas industry? Not so. The bulk of jobs on an offshore oil rig are roustabout jobs. These are truly entry level offshore jobs that need no experience. Because of the recent downturn, there are some who only get $35,000 a year. But the normal pay rate is around $45,000 to $50,000. Maybe $55,000 if you have more than 10 years experience and work in a unionized location.

So how do you do find roustabout job vacancies? If you are new to this field and do not have the connections, it can be difficult breaking in. The big job boards like Monster and Career Builder do not usually show blue collar or unskilled work like oil rig vacancies.

The best way to find oil rig roustabout jobs on offshore oil rigs is arguably through networking. Open your mouth and talk to everyone you know. Continue to keep in contact with them. Theoretically, if you just talk to 7 people a week, and each of them talks to 7 more, and those 7 talk to 7 more, nearly a million people will know that you are looking for a roustabout job offshore. In reality, you may need to talk to a hundred people in order to find the 7 who will remember you and care enough to ask other people.

Why go through so much trouble? Because many job seekers get their oil rig roustabout jobs through word of mouth. They talk to a friend of a friend, and that friend two steps removed is in a position to hire or recommend a roustabout for the oil rig he works on. In this field of work, a personal recommendation counts for much. The crew on an offshore oil rig is pretty tight knit. It comes from working together under difficult physical conditions for long periods of time. If a worker a hiring manager respects says, “Let’s give this guy a chance”, he will at least talk to you in an informal interview. If he says “OK”, all you need to do is submit a simple one-page resume which will be rubber stamped by HR and you could start work within a week.

If you get hired for offshore vacancies for roustabouts, you will find the work tough. You will work 2 weeks or 3 weeks of 12-hour shifts before you get any time off. Some of those shifts will be at night. You will work in hot weather, in cold weather, in rain, in snow, and even in strong winds. You may find yourself fighting fires, and you may have to work in high places. But remember this – for facing all this hardship, you are getting paid extra. If you do the same work in a construction yard, a trawler, or a port, you only get paid half of a job offshore on an oil platform.

Oil drilling rig jobs are not safe. They are physically strenuous and often performed in hazardous weather conditions in the middle of the open ocean. There aren’t too many men willing or able to do this kind of work until they retire. Most oil rig workers, especially those at the lower ranks (e.g. roustabouts and roughnecks) often take their savings and settle down to a quiet life or easier job. These savings can be considerable. A newly hired roustabout working on an offshore oil platform can easily earn $45,000 a year, and a roustabout with 10 years of experience can make $50,000 or even $55,000 a year (if unionized). Add the fact that some offshore oil rigs operate in international waters and their workers are exempted from federal income tax (and even state taxes, in some cases), and those savings go even further.

That’s not to say there are no retirement benefits on oil rigs. Like on the factory floor or in a construction yard, an offshore oil platform has different grades of workers. Much the same as everywhere else, unskilled workers who provide general labor should not expect much in the way of a retirement package. What’s different for an offshore oil rig roustabout (as compared to a factory worker or construction laborer) is that he is compensated for the extra danger and hardship he faces. For doing much the same thing as a laborer in a construction yard or general worker in a factory, he gets paid double the wages while working only 6 months out of every year (because his duty rotation is two weeks of work followed by two weeks off).

As you would expect, higher ranked workers who work in management, possess trade skills or have a college education get treated differently. As usual. Depending on the seniority, role, importance to the company, the actual employer (oil company vs oil service contractor vs oil drilling company vs outsourcing company), some employees in the oil industry can receive very favorable compensation and retirement packages. For example, petroleum geologists salaries on offshore oil rigs range from $80,000 to $130,000 per annum, depending on experience. New petroleum engineers get paid $80,000 to $110,000 a year. Both are likely to have 401(k) paid for them, as well as other typical retirement benefits for high-flyers.

Another common question from those new to oil rig work is the health and safety conditions on oil rigs. Despite the reputation, it’s not bad at all. There is usually a dedicated medical officer on board. He or she is often a registered nurse. Major illnesses and problems are evacuated by helicopter.

Obviously, the oil company does not provide all these health services to you out of the goodness of its heart. They do these things for several reasons. For one thing, it is necessary to continue to attract workers. Despite the high salaries, oil rigs, especially those that operate offshore, keep on losing workers. The work is physically strenuous and the working conditions are tough. Many oil rig workers pull one hitch and then decide that it’s not the life for them.

Another reason is that it is expensive to replace workers. Even for so-called unskilled work, e.g. roustabout jobs, a great deal of expensive training is required before he is allowed on an oil rig to work. First of all, he needs Helicopter Underwater Escape Training (HUET), firefighting training, First Aid training, etc. (Details depend on the legislation of the oil rig’s area of operation). The new worker also needs to be orientated to his new duties on the oil rig.

More sceptical observers might say that all these things are not being done for the workers’ health and safety on oil rigs, but to keep the expensive oil drilling rig safe. That is probably true. A new oil rig can cost upwards of a billion dollars to build, and it can cost $500,000 to $1,000,000 a day to operate an oil rig offshore. But personally, this kind of dollars and cents vested self-interest does a much better job of keeping workers safe and sound in a dangerous environment.

Offshore oil rig jobs pay well. This is partly to compensate for the dangerous working conditions and hardship faced. But it is also partly to attract workers to a tough job. Most people work in this field for the high salaries paid in the here and now, not for future retirement benefits. Health and safety on board oil rigs are actually pretty good, despite all the recent bad press. After all, the oil rig owner can be trusted to not want his multi-billion dollar oil platform go *KABOOM* and sink.

In general, the energy sector pays the highest salaries to geologists. If they are suitably qualified to find new oil fields, that is. A Geology major with an appropriate Masters degree can earn anywhere from $80,000 to $100,000. This is just the base salary and does not include sign-on bonuses, annual bonuses and performance bonuses. This is based on a report made by the American Geologic Institute on the job prospects of new petroleum geologists. An experienced petroleum geologist’s salary on an oil rig can add 50% to that. According to the University of Houston, 10 years of experience is worth up to $132,132 per year (on average). This is the sort of salary that even CEOs of small companies will envy.

But how are the job prospects for a geologist in the oil industry today? After all, we are just starting to recover from a major recession, and then the environmental disaster caused by BP’s Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico hit. The environmentalists are using this incident as a rallying cry to ban deep water oil drilling and move the world away from oil consumption. They have long been agitating for green energy, and the Deepwater Horizon accident has only made them more active.

However, they are not likely to have any impact on oil exploration and oil drilling. It is not because there is too much money in the oil industry. The simple fact is that the biggest oil companies in the world are major stakeholders in several green energy projects. One example is BP’s Oorja stove project in India, designed to help reduce the impact of traditional cooking methods on global warming.

This may seem surprising to some, but the oil companies really have a vested interest in moving the world away from burning oil. Why? Because cheap oil that is easy to extract is starting to run out. Most of the new oil fields being discovered lie more than 1,500 feet below the ocean and are quite far offshore. Those oil fields that are not deep beneath the ocean are like the Canadian tar sands or the oil shales in the western United States, where the oil is heavy and requires even more specialized and expensive methods of extraction. If alternative energies are not well developed by the time cheap oil runs out, the world is going to have to choose between burning oil for cars and using oil to make plastics, fertilizers and pesticides. No matter what, the oil drilling companies have to find new sources of oil. They know that well. For example, Exxon invests between $25 billion and $30 billion every year in oil exploration and production. This equates to somewhere around $79 million a day.

So let us get back to the question of what your salary will be as a geologist on an oil rig. Pending a new survey, there is not likely to be much change. You probably won’t get any sign-on bonus if you get recruited this year (2010), and bonuses are likely to be depressed for a while (especially for BP, TransOcean and Halliburton employees). Ditto for your retirement benefits, e.g. 401(k), etc. But if you just graduated high school, taking up Geology in college this year, next year (2011) or even the next few years is likely to prove advantageous. Due to the oil glut in the 1980s, when the price of oil dipped below $10 per barrel, the oil companies stopped hiring many workers, including their petroleum geologists. Because of this, there was a serious shortage of qualified oil workers when the economy started booming in the mid-2000s and demand for oil started forcing oil prices above $100 per barrel. Even in 2009, the middle of the recession, oil prices hovered around $50 to $60 per barrel, which means that job prospects and salaries for geologists and other drilling jobs in the oil industry remain positive.

Worse still (at least from the point of view of the oil companies) is the fact that it takes four years of study in college for a student to become a geologist. After that, it is another two to five years for a suitable Masters degree, and another four or five years of on-the-job training before a newly hired geologist becomes productive. As a petroleum geologist, you can expect your employer to spend $30000 to $50000 a year keeping you trained and up to spec on the latest oil exploration technologies over the next decade.

As a petroleum geologist, do not expect to spend much time in an air-conditioned office. You will be doing a lot of field work, whether on land or offshore on a survey ship. While the usual cycle of duty for most offshore oil field jobs is two weeks of work followed by two weeks off, an exploratory geologist on a deep sea survey drillship can sometimes spend six weeks on and six week off. Obviously, this depends on the employer.

Basically speaking, a good petroleum geologist who can find new oil fields is always in great demand. Remember that the world still runs on oil, whether to burn as fuel or to turn into plastic, fertilizer and pesticides for use in growing food. It is a profession that is critical to the industrialized world. This is reflected in the high salaries of geologists working in the oil industry.

An oil rig is like a floating village. Everybody knows each other and in such conditions they learn how to take care of each other. It’s like the army, you’re have to cover each other’s backs, because the situation could go south any minute. The money is great and if you can work with only a handful of people around you for weeks on end, it will definitely be worthy of your efforts.

The basic job that most people, who are now sitting on various levels of the rig hierarchy, started out in is the roustabout position. Roustabout job vacancies are almost always open on off shore drilling installations due to the high level of staff attrition. It takes a special type of man to do this kind of job year in and year out. It’s not for everyone and those who think they can handle the pressure will find out their limits sooner than they’d expected.

Oil rig roustabout jobs require a person who can operate under direct supervision. If you take such a job, you’re going to be the muscle and your boss, most often the driller, will be the brains of the outfit. Roughnecks are often mistaken with roustabouts but their responsibilities are fairly different from that of a roustabout.

The roughnecks are like the non-coms in the army, they tell you to put two pipes together, you do it quickly, efficiently and safely. Like a private in the army, your job is to do what you are told. Your job will also include painting, maintenance, rust scrubbing, and cleaning; basically anything that needs to be done but doesn’t need any experience. Roughnecks, on the other hand, are more skilled workers. There is some overlap between the two jobs, but they do piping, maintenance and other skilled work than the guys one step below them on the hierarchy ladder.

These jobs are just to kick-start you in your career once you’ve found out which drilling rig is hiring. To be hired you need to prove that you don’t wait for others to do something for you and are willing to get anything for yourself. Pick up the phone, and call agencies, companies that work in the upstream sector. If you take things into your own hands you are almost guaranteed to be able to pick between oil rig vacancies.

‘How do I become an off shore driller?’ you might ask. There is nothing simpler than that; you accept employment on oil rigs as a grunt and work your way up from there. Once you’ve spent a year in oil rig roustabout jobs, you’ll ‘know the drill’ without any pun intended. Most people who operate the machinery and the bits are people who started out on the bottom of the food chain and worked their way up from there.

The money is great, you work for six months and you have six months off. While on the rig you may work two weeks on rig and have two weeks off on the shore. Other companies may differ from this, but as a general rule of thumb, you are not required to work for more than three weeks in a row. Very rare cases, like some exploratory drillships or survey ships, may require a six on/six off schedule. The days are long and the job is hard, but you work twelve hours a day for 14 days before you have a two week vacation. You work 168 hours a month. There are many white collar jobs with longer hours than that but with a lower salary (e.g. entry level IT jobs, doctors on their housemanship, law interns, etc.)

The pay is exceptional, for six months worth of work you’re looking at a paycheck of $35,000 to $45,000 and the retirement benefits on oil rigs are often better than on the shore. Full dental, health and vision care, life and health insurance is the norm. So is the dorm room on site and the food. With all these benefits the $40,000 paycheck immediately seems bigger. And don’t forget that some offshore work entitles you to additional tax breaks (both federal and state). Remember to consult your accountant or tax lawyer. They cost money, but if you work offshore you can make it back in spades.

Most entry level oil rig jobs need no experience off shore, but the companies listing them would like to see that you recognize a screwdriver. For more specialized jobs you may be required to show relevant certification or licensing. For some jobs, like oil rig welding, you may need to undergo a test. Other semi-skilled jobs, e.g. motorhands, may also need to prove that they’re experienced in their respective fields. While experience on an off-shore drilling installation is preferred, it is not always required.

When applying for an offshore oil rig job, writing a cover letter is necessary. However, many people find the task of writing cover letters and resume very stressful. This stress, in return, causes them to make many mistakes, causing them to look careless or incompetent to the recruiter. Seriously, now, if you were operating an oil rig that cost several billion dollars to build and a million dollars a day to run, would you hire someone who could not be bothered to write up a decent cover letter and resume with no spelling or grammar mistakes? To avoid making obvious (and stupid) mistakes, look for a good sample cover letter for an entry level position in the oil patch. Substitute your personal information and tailor your previous job experiences to fit the same format. The more experience you have in go-getter roles the better it is, but it’s not the CV that is going to get you the job. It’s your persistence and will to land the job that counts and you need to make the companies see that.

Apply to multiple places simultaneously, because some of the listings may be outdated, or some may require someone for a future job. Call contractor companies that work for the big oil companies and ask if they have anything going on at the moment. Even if you are a fairly skilled worker recently laid off, you may want to go for a roustabout position. If you can work in wind, rain and snow, you will be able to see paychecks that many white-collar people with high level formal education need to work decades for.

The life on the rig is demanding, but if you can get along with your colleagues, there is nothing that will stop you from earning a good living; better yet, you get to enjoy it for six months out of every year. In fact, that is exactly what many unmarried offshore oil rig workers do. During their extensive time off, they go on vacation, traveling to far off places.

Due to the high attrition in these fairly low-skilled positions the oil companies are always hiring but you need to know where to find the positions. Look around both online and offline, and write an appealing cover letter and CV that contains only the necessary information and nothing else. Keep it short and simple and make the most important points jump right at the reader, i.e. the recruiter and the hiring manager. Also don’t be shy to talk over the phone because the vast majority of the positions are filled in this way. Which brings up an important point: if you have a soft, breathy, girly-sounding voice, take the time to fix it. Regardless of what the judges and lawyers say, working on an offshore oil platform is a man’s job. If you want to get hired, make sure you sound like a man.

Basically, the employers like to see that you are serious about this field and you are not afraid to get what you want. That’s the type of worker they’re looking for.

So what’s not to like? You have to work hard, but you get high pay with no experience needed. Roustabout jobs are nearly ideal jobs for those who are more inclined to physical action and do not want to go to college. While they are technically menial jobs like that of laborers, it can also be argued that many office jobs do not require any more ability to think than work on board an oil rig does. Most of the work done in an office is pretty routine and can be done by anyone with a high school diploma. Most of the people working in an office never use any of the knowledge or skills they learn at college, and so they have no right to look down on physical work like that of oil rig roustabouts.

In the long run, the prospects for offshore oil rig companies are rather bright. Even during the latest recession, the price of oil did not drop below $60 per barrel. Even though the economy is said by experts to be weak but recovering, the price of oil is hovering around the $70 level. The reason for this high price is due to fundamentals.

What are these fundamentals that are keeping oil prices high (and keeping the prospects for roustabout jobs bright)? There are actually several parts to it. The first is that all the oil fields which are easy to drill (on dry land or near the shore) are running out of oil (hitting peak oil). The second is that the large oil companies have not been finding as many major new oil fields as they need to in order to keep up with the structural growth in the economy. The third reason is that the world’s economy is becoming more and more wealthy and industrialized. More and more people in Third World countries (especially India and China) are becoming rich enough to own cars and other material goods which directly or indirectly need oil.

Overall, prospects of oil rig jobs in the oil industry are bright. At least, it’s bright if you are working offshore. But who are these offshore drilling companies that are hiring? Where do you find these roustabout job vacancies? Well, two of these companies are BP and Exxon, or rather … the oil services companies that are doing the actual drilling for BP and Exxon. BP just found a new oil field in the Gulf of Mexico. Exxon found two (or three, depending on who you ask) new major deep ocean oil fields off Brazil. Of course, these are fairly new discoveries and you should not expect to see them come online for a few more years. However, there are older offshore oil fields that were discovered five or ten years ago and are only coming online now.

When looking for any job, the first and most basic step that everyone tells you to do is to check the job boards (like Monster) and the newspaper job advertisements. During good times (for the oil industry, which is a different beast altogether than a good economy), this is a good and simple strategy. It can get you a job on an offshore oil rig fast, and you don’t have to do too much work looking for a job.

The problem, of course, is that times are not always good. Even then, there are oil rig jobs available. For example, Exxon reported to their investors that they were spending $150 billion over five years (from 2009 onwards) on oil exploration and production. They were actually telling their investors that they were going to spend a lot of money right in the middle of a major recession. That means they expect to make even more money than they are going to spend. Remember that where there is money, there are always jobs.

So the second job hunting strategy is networking. Talk to everyone you know. Tell them that you are looking for roustabout vacancies on an offshore oil rig. It will be embarrassing. It will take guts. Some of the people you talk to will just laugh at you. They will tell you that there are no jobs during a recession (They are wrong. There are always jobs, you just need to know where to find them). Some of them will try to dissuade you. They will say that oil rig jobs are dangerous (It’s true, but that’s why you get paid the big bucks). Basically, talk to your family and relatives, talk to your friends, ex-classmates, ex-teachers, even talk to your barber and local grocers. The point is not that one of them will know where to find an oil rig job. The point is that one of them will know someone who knows someone who is hiring for a roustabout vacancy. Unless you are lucky, it is not easy, and it is not fast, but it is free.

The third strategy for finding roustabout vacancies is to go where all the offshore oil rig workers go. Most offshore oil rigs in a certain area share a common location where they pick up and drop off their offshore roustabouts. Men, being men, will hit the bars and pubs after work, especially when they have just finished a two week tour of duty where they are not allowed to touch a single drink. So what you want to do is make friends with the bartenders. A good bartender will know when most of these workers come in to drink. He will even know which of them can make hiring decisions. He will also know which oil services companies are hiring, and which are firing. He will be able to introduce you to Joe, who had been complaining that he had to cover for other people because they quit. He will be able to tell you to avoid Jack, who is facing a lay-off. Like the second strategy, this is something that takes time. But in bad times, if you go the extra step, you will do better than those who only do what everyone else does.

Finding roustabout vacancies at offshore oil rig companies is not rocket science. There are not many jobs which pay you $50,000 a year without needing a college degree or any specific work experience. There are always oil rig jobs … IF you know how to find them and IF you are willing to do the extra work needed to find them.