Thousands of job seekers are hunting for the same few
offshore oil rig jobs in the same old places. Nowadays, you need to do a lot more than before to get hired. With $400 billion alone being spend looking for new oil fields in 2009, there are plenty of unadvertised offshore drilling jobs. So why chase after the same oil rig jobs as everyone else? If you follow the crowd like a lemming, you will fall off the edge of the cliff like everyone else.
Once the job vacancy is advertised, hundreds of other people will apply for it. No matter how good your resume is, your chances of getting an interview, much less be hired, are downright pathetic - especially in a recession. If you have been looking for jobs in these three places:
- Free online job boards, e.g. Monster, Yahoo Jobs
- Websites of large oil companies, e.g. Shell, Exxon, Transocean, etc.
- National and local newspaper job advertisements
Then you have been treating your job hunt like playing the lottery. Stop wasting your time. 80% of the other guys looking for offshore oil rig jobs are also using these same 3 methods. If you seriously want to work on an oil rig, you need to look for offshore drilling jobs which have not been advertised yet. Remember - when someone leaves his job, HR has to follow a specific and time-consuming procedure. In some companies with a lot of red tape, the oil rig manager needs to make a specific request to HR for more workers, which takes even more time. It could take months before the job vacancy is advertised in the newspaper (especially for a big oil company). These 3 following techniques count on this long lag time to help you find oil rig employment:
- The 5000 largest US companies listed on the stock exchanges are listed in the Wilshire index. The smallest company on this list has a market cap of hundreds of millions of US Dollars. 200 to 300 of these companies are in the oil and gas industry. Most people only know of the 20 largest oil companies at the top of the list. That leaves at least 180 companies for you.
- Look up trade associations and business bureaus, concentrating on those which serve companies in the oil industry. Buy the membership directories they publish. Start with the business groups nearest where you stay, and slowly broaden your research. These directories will contain some contact numbers and a variety of useful information on smaller companies. Shortlist the companies which deal in the oil industry.
- Almost everyone under 40-years old forgets or ignores the Yellow Pages these days, but they still contain some useful information. Copy down the names and contact information of companies in the oil industry.
Remember that the early bird gets the worm. If you want to get the best leads on
offshore oil rig jobs, then you need to find the oil company before its HR department starts advertising job vacancies. Once the job has been advertised, it turns into a lottery.
