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Oil rig jobs pay well. Of all the jobs where you do honest work for money, working on an offshore oil rig arguably pays the best. In many cases, you can get paid double the rates for doing the same thing, e.g. an oil rig welder makes around $62,000 but a factory welder makes only half of that. Of course, there are exceptions that do not translate well, for example scaffolders. On an offshore oil platform, a good scaffolder makes around $55,000 to $60,000, but on a construction site a scaffolder earns $5 to $7 an hour. The money is not the only good point. You typically only work 1/2 to 2/3 the number of hours as a regular job in a factory or construction yard.
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.
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This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Oil Rig Jobs Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
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