Offshore Jobs

For those seeking jobs offshore, opportunities continue to grow, even with the economic slowdown. Half of the current workforce in the oil and gas industry is retiring in the next 10 years. This is creating a huge labor shortage for the energy companies and drilling contractors, and a huge opportunity for those seeking jobs offshore and on land. There has never been a better time for either experienced or entry-level workers to find jobs offshore.

This growing workforce shortage is creating a groundswell of opportunity for catering personnel who would like to find an offshore catering job. Jobs offshore in catering in 2009 – 2010 is expected to accelerate as the economy begins turning around. While all job categories are experiencing vacancies and shortages, the opportunities are particularly good for offshore cooking jobs and other catering personnel.

There are many openings for a variety of jobs offshore in catering positions, including Chefs, cooks, assistant cooks, night bakers, galley hands, stewards and stewardesses, housekeeping and cleaning staff. Offshore catering is typically contracted out and managed by catering and food service companies. The catering contractor is responsible for all food service, to include meals, snacks, and special Holiday requirements. Additionally, the offshore catering service manages the cleaning and upkeep of the kitchen and chow hall, as well as the recreational and common areas and sleeping quarters. The following jobs are in high demand and available now.

Offshore Catering Jobs, Duties and Wages

Camp Boss

The Camp Boss is responsible for running the catering department. He oversees the chefs, cooks, night bakers, stewards, and housekeepers. The rig crew work long, hard hours, and an important part of running the operation is ensuring they have adequate energy and good morale. Ensuring that the kitchen puts out great tasting and nutritious food is what the Camp Boss does every day. He is assisted in this responsibility with a small crew of Chefs, Cooks, Night Bakers, Galley Hands and Stewards Stewardesses. Four to Six main courses are prepared and served every 24 hours, split into 12 hour shifts, so that both shifts get good meals. The Camp Boss also manages the Stewards and Stewardesses, ensuring that the rig’s recreation areas, downtime areas and, living quarters are kept clean, and the laundry completed.

Chef Head Cook

For the Chef or Lead Cook position, while previous offshore experience isn’t a requirement, previous cooking experience is. The quality of offshore food preparation is often comparable to the fare one would receive in the nicer Hotels and Restaurants; the food is good, nutritious, and there is lots of it. The Chef plays an important role in keeping morale high among the drilling crews; looking forward to a good meal goes a long way in maintaining job satisfaction. Experience managing a kitchen is a must. This is not an entry-level cooking position, one is expected to have a proven record of preparing quality food. However, those with less experience will be considered for the Galley Hand or Night Cook. Salaries run from the mid 60s – 70s, depending on the rig, the catering service company one is working for, and experience.

Night Baker

This is a very important position on the rig. All bread onboard is baked by the night baker, as well as pastries, muffins and desserts. On smaller rigs, this may be rolled up with the Assistant Cook Sous Chef as one job; on larger rigs, the positions will be two separate jobs. Offshore Night Baker wages will run from the 50s to 60s.

Night Cook

Most people with experience seeking an offshore cooking job will start here. The Night Cook will work the night shift. This is a great position in which to obtain one’s first offshore job. The Assistant Cook will prepare meals according to the recipes and directions of the Chef or Lead Cook. If you do a good job, and prove capable of running the kitchen in the Chef’s absence, you can move into a Lead Cook or Chef’s position fairly quickly. Offshore Assistant Cook wages will range from the mid 50s to mid 60s.

Galley Hand

If you have worked as a dishwasher or busboy in a Hotel or Restaurant for any decent amount of time, you can qualify of an Offshore Galley Hand job. This is a great way to get a foot in the door for those wishing to progress up to Chef or Head Cook – as on the mainland, many Offshore Chefs have gotten their start in the industry by starting at the bottom and working their way up. Offshore Galley Hand wages salary will range from the mid 40s to mid 50s.

Cleaning Housekeeping Staff

Generally speaking, anyone with mainland experience in a janitorial or housekeeping position, especially in industrial facilities or hotels, can qualify for jobs offshore in the same capacity. It is not uncommon for people wanting to break into the industry to accept a cleaning or housekeeping job, get to know people, and then, when the opportunity arises, advancing into a position of greater responsibility. This could be a supply room job, a roustabout job, or moving up the ladder to become a maintenance supervisor. It is quite common for people to start in this sort of position and then make a career in the offshore oil industry, moving in whatever direction they choose. A great way to get the proverbial foot in the door. Offshore Janitorial and Cleaning Housekeeping wages salary will range from the mid 40s to mid 50s.

Steward

The Steward Stewardess position is essentially a combination of Galley Hand and Janitorial Housekeeping responsibilities. On small rigs, these jobs may be rolled into one, and that would be the role of Steward. Offshore Steward wages will range from the mid 40s to mid 50s.

Getting Hired for Jobs Offshore in the Catering Section

For those without industry experience, it has been proven that the fastest way to get hired is to utilize one of the legitimate employment services for jobs offshore. Be sure to work only with honest, legitimate companies that will assist you with getting your resume written correctly for an offshore catering job.They should have references of people who have landed jobs offshore with them. A legitimate recruiter or job finding service will make no guarantees of getting hired, but should guarantee your satisfaction with their services, with a refund if no job is procured.

There are some investors who spend a lot of time dealing with local jobs that are not functioning. In such a case, it is recommended that you should look for alternative ways that will help in generating a lot of income in a short period of time. Here are some offshore outsourcing strategies that can be utilized to tap energy, while at the same time spending very little capital.

Search for companies that are involved in giving outsourcing services. There are a lot of companies available in different parts of the world.  If possible, look for those companies that are on the opposite side of the meridian, since you can get the work accomplished at night. This allows you greater flexibility at a low cost.

Give work transparently explained. This will ensure that the outsourcing company given the task will not spend a lot of hours doing the wrong work. This is sometimes contentious, as no client will pay for wrong work while the outsourcing agent will claim payments.

In order to get quality work, you should give a little for the first time and then proceed to give the rest after you are sure that the offshore outsourcing agents are giving quality work.

There is only one problem usually faced by most people when they are looking for offshore jobs. This problem is none other than lacking offshore work experience. The first question the interviewer asks (and this always presides any other questions like the position the applicant is applying for), is basically the one concerning one experience as an offshore employee. However, there shouldn’t be any need for worry as there is a very easy way of overcoming this setback. The good thing is that many people have shared such positions and have gone through them. Now – let’s find how they make it.

The best thing to do in this situation is to accurately point towards former work experience such that it maybe convincing proof of getting employed. Importantly, it is pointing towards former working experience that can easily be transferred into an offshore job situation. Luck is upon you if you have previously worked in military or you own the tag of a practiced tradesman. This will definitely play to your greater advantage. The reason is very simple-most offshore rig companies usually look for such type of employees.

There is no stopping. Having prior experience can even catapult you to greater levels. The best probable thing is first accepting an offshore job that is slightly lower in level. After that, just work your way up the scale by familiarizing yourself with the working environment and gaining more skills as well as proving yourself to a given task.

If you are looking for the best of offshore jobs, then you must consider offshore outsourcing as a lucrative option because this is one of those categories of jobs that have ensured that all the small and the big businesses benefit immensely out of which. The reason why an organization would opt for offshore outsourcing is to manage the business more efficiently.

Consider a department that needs maintenance and support of the other departments of the company. If this work can be given to someone else to manage who is able to hire manpower and take charge of resources and manage them for the company, then the parent organization will be able to free resources to manage the remaining departments and ensure that revenues are increased via these departments.

On the other hand the contractor has got the full liberty to manage the work and the results are based on the satisfaction of customers Most of the times, the revenue generated from the after sales service is the primary clause for management of the front end of the business but what also holds importance is the quality of services offered because that is what determines how good the service is.

If you are looking for offshore jobs, then one of the most lucrative options is to go for offshore outsourcing jobs. The procedure is simple and there are many benefits attached to it. If you are someone who has been in the industry for the past few years, then the experience will help you take a stride forward in your career.

Offshore outsourcing is a specialist job. Especially when it comes to the support jobs where the administrative control is in the hands of an organization in another country and the customers and clients are from some other country. There are many rules and regulations which are not the same in the two places.

Therefore it becomes mandatory that the knowledge of these rules is provided to the offshore body of the organization which essentially hires local employees. These employees are not aware of the policies and procedures and therefore an expert must make them understand the need of such procedures in the host country and how would the clients expect these procedures to be followed so that there is no breach of security or procedural protocols. This will ensure smooth transactions from both the wings of the organization and the benefits will be immense.

President Barack Obama’s announcement Thursday that work at 33 deepwater drilling operations would be suspended immediately was like sealing the region’s economic death from the ongoing oil plume gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. This affects many offshore jobs.

Sixteen companies have operations that will be affected by the six-month shutdown, including Shell, Chevron, BP, Marathon, Eni, Petrobras, Hess and LLOG Exploration, a Metairie-based division of Hess.

After oil prices crashed in 1999, deepwater drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico didn’t really get going again until 2004.

Source: Nola.

There are many ways to conduct business in offshore outsourcing jobs. These methods and procedures are adopted so that the business in the offshore jobs gets done smoothly. This is why the communications between the two wings is very important. Let us first take into account the policies and procedures followed when one is involved in outsourcing profiles.

The necessity for the business to be conducted in a manner that is easy to follow by both the wings of business is mandatory considering that the distance between the two is immense and the policies and the ground rules at one end are considerably different than the other. This is what makes the commonly established procedure that goes well with the local laws of the offshore wings and the client side of the business an important process to develop.

Such procedures are updated from time to time and the information is to be cascaded from the client end to the offshore end and then the common procedure should be followed after all the employees have been thoroughly trained on the updated procedure. This also helps in the transfer of information smooth from all the levels of business, even if it is the front end or the lowest rung of the employee ladder.

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There is the procedure called Data Protection policy which is prevalent in many countries provided an organization with is not dispensed to any other organization or any other individual.

There are strict rules against this and the breach of these rules can cause lawsuits being filed against the parent company and this can lead to a huge financial compensation which is a loss to an organization. This is particularly true where the offshore jobs are concerned, especially when we take into account the offshore outsourcing jobs that particularly deal with customer facing departments.

Consider the situation where the offshore outsourcing job is in a country that does not implement the policy of data protection with the same strictness as it is done in the host country. This means that the employees will not be aware of the procedures to follow to interact with the customers that may lead to the breach of this policy.

This is why it becomes important that all the employees be trained on the procedures to follow to ensure that there is no breach of the private data protection. The host country being adept in the rules sets up the policies and procedures that are data protection compliant.

Image via Wikipedia

You might be looking for entry level offshore jobs, but the problem may present itself in the form of luck of experience in, let’s say, the oil drilling industry.  But getting hired on an offshore rig for entry level jobs is very feasible, albeit without having worked on one before. Many entry level offshore jobs are available.  Basically, all will be determined with what you want to do.  Another thing that will count is being able to reach out to the right contacts to get your resume in front.  There are ranges of entry level offshore jobs as well opportunities. These include crane operators, floor men or roughnecks and roundabouts, cleaner/painters, rig electricians, rig paramedics, rig mechanics, cooks and assistant cooks and storekeepers.

And for most people that look forward to getting into the industry, they get hired as a roustabout or rigger, otherwise known as floor men.  Having even a modicum of industry training does not matter in this case, as the odds of getting entry level offshore jobs are going to increase considerably.   Besides, it is probable to get employed with no training whatsoever.  And for those who do not have any experience, the fortunate side is that there are programs that can help them out.

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