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Wherever and whenever money enters the picture, you should expect to find misinformation and scams. recruitment for drilling work as well as other jobs in the oil and gas industry is no exception. How do you know if the job advertised on a job website is real? How do you even know if the website itself is real (other than the big ones like Monster or the corporate websites of the oil giants like Shell, BP, etc.)? And by the way, did you know that some scammers use job postings to scam job applicants out of their money?
I can already hear some people saying, “We’ll be fine if we stick with Monster and the big corporate websites of well-known oil companies.” It’s okay. I’m sure all your competitors will be very happy to have you out of the picture. The problem with sticking only to the corporate website for Shell (or its rivals like BP, Exxon Mobil, etc.) is that most of their job postings are for upper-level executive positions. This is where they post jobs like Regional Sales Manager. They do not advertise entry-level jobs. In fact, they almost never hire workers for their oil rigs, preferring to outsource the operation and hire service companies like Schlumberger, Transocean and Halliburton.
Some of you are probably already saying, “Then we’ll go to these (Schlumberger, et. al.) websites.” How nice. Unfortunately, they only or mainly advertise positions that require a college education. They rarely advertise openings for jobs like laborers, painters, or scaffolding. If you don’t have at least a relevant diploma or associate degree, you don’t stand a chance.
If you want to get a job, you have to look for smaller subcontractors who do the actual work for the oil service companies. You should also check employment websites other than Monster. But once again, we return to the same old questions:
- Is the website real?
- Is the vacancy real?
- Is the offer real?
Let’s start with the first question: Is the website real? A real company’s website should contain their contact information. This must include a physical address and phone number. If you look at Halliburton’s corporate website, you can see an example of this on their contact page. CareerBuilder also has complete contact information on its website. On the other hand, some companies like Monster and HotJobs seem to be too arrogant and don’t bother to provide their physical address.
You may be wondering: Why is a physical address and phone number important? Because most fraudulent websites never publish an address. Even if they do, the addresses are fake in most cases. In other words, you can use this information to track down a real business by matching its published address against the one you find in the phone book. You should also call the published phone number versus the number in the phone book. Before disclosing your personal information, you should verify if the oil contractor or employment board is a real company.
Continuing, the second and third questions can be handled together. Unfortunately, there is no foolproof way to tell if an advertisement or even a job offer is genuine. All we can do is play the odds by educating ourselves about likely salaries in the oil industry. That way, we can make an informed guess about the job offered. Here is some salary data collected around 2003 to 2005:
- $150,000 or more: Central office administration
- $100,000: Tool pusher
- $70,000 to $90,000: mud engineers, medics, driller, rig assistant
- $50,000 to $60,000: laborers, painters, scaffolding, radio operators, crane, cooks, butlers
Despite the recent recession, oil wages remain relatively high, especially for offshore oil rigs. If someone offers you an entry-level drilling rig job with a salary of around $50,000 to $60,000, it’s still credible. But a $100,000 laborer job is unlikely unless the price of oil rises much higher, say above $200 a barrel.
In addition to a salary that is too high, a sure indicator of a job scam is when they ask you for money. It doesn’t matter what you call it, whether it’s a processing fee, an administrative fee, a training fee, a fee for expediting special documentation, a fee for a mandatory medical check-up, an equipment fee, etc. A real employer doesn’t ask you for money before you start working, especially in the lucrative oil industry.
Of course, once you get to the stage of an actual job offer, you need to verify the existence of your potential employer. Request the name of the oil services company, the physical address and the contact telephone number. Check everything with the phone book and be sure to sign the contract at the indicated address.