Offshore Jobs, Entry Level Requirements

The entry level requirements that offshore employers specify for offshore jobs are more about personal characteristics of an applicant, than the education, experience, expertise or training that a person has. Oil rig companies are almost always looking for new workers, because this sector has high labor turnover and supply of the labor force is much lower than the demand. That is why to attract workers to the industry, offshore employers offer considerably higher salaries than any other industry can offer. To be more specific entry level position in offshore industry pays $50,000-60,000 that is quite attractive nowadays.

The common myth about offshore jobs is that people think of offshore workers as people who are directly working on oil drilling and extraction. This is not true, because offshore oil rigs also require large number of additional personnel, such as engineers, electrical engineers, cooks, doctors, etc. This creates opportunities for individuals of different professions to work offshore.

As we already mentioned above offshore job eligibility requirements are mostly about your personality, but still there are few things that offshore employers ask from applicants:

Health Requirements: offshore employers require from applicants to be in good physical and mental condition, since offshore jobs are usually associated with hard work under harsh weather conditions. Before hiring employers ask from offshore jobs applicants appropriate confirmation of their good healthy condition. This is usually report of full physical examination and X-ray. Sometimes applicants are even asked to submit drug test;

Age Requirements: applicants must be at least 18 years old. There is no upper threshold, but the average age of offshore workers is 27;

Experience Requirements: having good experience is regarded to be an advantage in any industry. In this sense offshore industry is not an exception. If you have good experience, you have higher chances to get hired, but if you do not have any experience at all, you still have a good chance to get employed at entry level offshore jobs. If you work hard and gain experience, you have good chance to get promoted;

Education Requirements: usually offshore employers do seek for any educational background in applicants. They are more interested in your ability to learn things easily and quickly. However there are some jobs that do require basic educational background. Such jobs are controller, engineer, etc. For rest of the offshore jobs employers usually hire people and organize for them training programs to develop their knowledge and expertise;

About the author: Elliot Clark is a writer, scholar and freelancer. Author of number of papers on offshore industry and employment. Visit his Facebook Page