Which Drilling Rig Is Hiring?

When you are looking for oil rig jobs, it is reasonable to wonder which drilling rigs are hiring. When times are good, it is enough to take the lazy way out: looking at oil drilling job ads in the newspapers and job boards as well as registering yourself with recruitment agencies. But when the going gets tough, the job seekers who find the vacancies are those who go the extra mile,

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!

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 7:30 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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