Most people try to get oil field employment without spending any cash. Unfortunately, there are only a few free methods to look for a job – submitting your resume to Monster, free online job boards, recruitment agencies and your local unemployment office (if you stay in an oil town); and scanning newspaper advertisements for oil job vacancies. With a ratio of 10,000 or more people all chasing the same 10 oilfield jobs, your chances of success are pretty poor.
Most of the people competing with you to chase for an oilfield job are not willing to spend any money. They are:
Afraid of scams
Stingy cheapskates
No money to spend
Ignorant of how the world really works
They think they are entitled to a job, so someone should give them one even if they don’t do anything to earn it
If you are doing the same things that everyone else is doing, and not getting any interviews, it is foolish to continue following the crowd. You have to seriously think about doing things that most job-seekers do not do. Firstly, do you have a good resume and cover letter suitable for jobs in oil field? Someone with 20 years of relevant experience can put together a slapdash resume and still get interviews. But a recent high school or college graduate does not have that same luxury. Don’t you think spending $50 to get a professionally written resume is worth the money?
Secondly, do you know that getting an oilfield job is a numbers game? This is especially the case when there is a recession. The more resumes you send out, the better your chance of a successful interview. Experience shows that for every 30 job applications an experienced guy submits, he will get three to six interviews. Depending on how greedy or competent he is, every 5 interviews he attends will get him at least one or two job offers.
In good times, sending out 10 resumes using only the free online job boards like Monster will get you one or even two job offers (as long as you don’t flub the job interview). But in tough times, you may need to send 100 to 200 resumes to get a decent offer for jobs in oil field. How many resumes have you sent out so far – 10, 50, 200? The person who sent out 200 resumes is much more likely to get hired for oil field jobs. But relying only on job boards and newspaper advertisements, it is very hard to see how you can send out even 100 resumes quickly. Even if you look on the internet, it is difficult to find the email address of the human resource departments for oil companies – especially the smaller oil service contractors who do the bulk of the hiring. The situation gets worse when you consider that many small companies do not have a website.
You have spend money to get all these contact phone numbers, postal addresses and email addresses:
Order the membership directories of trade associations in the oil industry
Order the membership directories published by business associations/bureaus
Buy the Yellow Pages from the telephone companies
If you want to save time and effort, you can try paying one of the resume submission companies who specialize in the oil and gas industry. They will send your resume to hundreds or even thousands of oil companies. Not all of them are good – you’ll have to do some research to find out which ones are reliable and can do a good job.
Getting hired for oil field employment fast, means doing more than what all your competitors are doing. If you follow the crowd like a lemming, you’ll join them when they go over the cliff. Is that what you want?