Category Archives: Career
How to Start a Career as an Oil & Gas Landman
A landman is a well-paid and rewarding position within the oil and gas industry. However, getting your foot in the door after you meet the initial qualifications is not a clear-cut process. Most landmen started their career in oil and gas in different ways. That’s why it’s best to implement a multi-faceted approach to becoming a landman. How do you accomplish this approach? By following the steps below: make sure you possess the necessary prerequisites, then gain real-world experience by volunteering, enrolling in a program, taking a course or simply working your way up the corporate ladder.
Prerequisites
You must possess four prerequisites before you can start working in some capacity as a landman: a Bachelor’s degree from a four-year university in science or business; outstanding interpersonal and communication skills; a high level of analytical skills and attention to detail; and experience in real estate, or preferably, the oil and gas industry itself. If you do not have all of these prerequisites, you may be able to land a job if you are particularly ambitious and show great potential, but most likely you need to fill the gaps in the value you provide any oil and gas company as a landman.
Gain Additional Experience
Once you have the prerequisites to get started working, it’s time to find an outlet. This does not mean you will find a job right away — perhaps you need more specialized education, or maybe you even need to volunteer your time to get real-world experience. Yes, education can be considered additional experience if it consists of a landman course or a petroleum land management program from an accredited university.
- Landman Course: These courses provide a fast track to the landman profession, available conveniently in person or online. Only pay for a course that is AAPL certified. As a side note, it may be crucial for you to get certified by the American Association of Petroleum Landmen.
- Petroleum Land Management Program: Obtaining a degree in petroleum land management is highly desired by oil and gas companies, even if you already have a degree.
- Volunteering: If you can’t get experience any other way, consider volunteering for an established landman. Though it may be hard to find one that needs help, when you do you will make many important connections that can help you establish your career.
- Climbing the Corporate Ladder: It might sound basic, but working as a leasing agent or analyst, land tech or title analyst is one of the most common ways to advance to a full landman position, or before that, an Associate Landman position.
Best Masters Degrees to Earn Big Bucks!
Jobs that the best Masters degrees get you might mean you will still have to get dirty … but all that money will help ease the pain! 🙂
These days, the big worry that is permeating college campuses across the land is that a bachelor’s degree is no longer enough to ensure entrance into the good life that had been promised to an entire generation since their high school days.
With so many recent grads struggling to find employment with their first degree, many are doubling down and going back to school in pursuit of their master’s degree, convinced that it will give them the edge to end up on top in the end.
While this may be partially true, going for this elevated title after your name will be hard work, more so than your first time through school. Furthermore, you’ll be piling up more dirt on that mound of debt you’ve already made for yourself; therefore, it is vital that you do your research so that you can be sure that your shiny new master’s degree will put you into a pond filled with juicy jobs rather than one that is stagnant and dead.
What follows are the best masters degrees that you can tackle in the present day, Â thereby putting you on the path to landing that massive fish, rather than continuing your current trend of casting a line into the water and hoping for the best. Let’s break each of them down in further detail below…
1) MSc in Physics
While that nondescript BSc allowed you to maintain a GPA above 3.0, the bleak job market means its time to get serious and get down to brass tacks.
If your physics classes were second nature to you, then specializing in this discipline for your Master’s degree will yield you valuable dividends once you land a position in it after school. Software engineers, physicists and other careers relating to highly valuable knowledge that is needed to drive 21st century technologies will continue to be in high demand in an increasingly insecure future.
Current median salaries run around $115,000 per year, which will allow you and your future family to have the comfortable life that you’ve always dreamed of having.
2) MSc in Geology
As easy oil deposits continue to get tougher to find, the oil and gas industry will need to get ever more creative and innovative in order to continue to extract fossil fuels in the future. By getting your MSc qualification in oil and gas, you’ll get to participate in the intensely profitable business.
Not enough undergrads are pursuing degrees in the hard sciences these days, a fact that will make you a very valuable commodity. In addition to a very generous median salary of $100,000 to $120,000, other perks like extended vacation time (well above the national average in America), health benefits that vastly outstrip the meager offerings of other industries, and performance bonuses that can tack on tens of thousands of dollars to your take home pay makes this career option very alluring one.
3) MA in Economics
At this point in history, a number of socioeconomic factors relating to the limits of so-called perpetual growth, government intervention in private-sector economies and continual disruption of traditional industries by high technology have thrown conventional economic models into chaos.
In the future, the business world and governments around the globe will need fresh blood and new thinking to chart the way ahead. For taking on these complex problems and guiding these entities toward concrete action, you will be handsomely rewarded, as economists with a Masters level of education presently take home $116,000 per year on a median basis.
Oops moment you want to avoid when involved in a video meeting…
When it comes to communicating with one another, human beings can be very awkward. Not all the time of course, but often enough someone says something or does something that just makes others feel uncomfortable. Depending on the means of communication, these instances can be incredibly awkward, slightly annoying or somewhere in between. Talking face-to-face is the most effective means of communication possible, but it’s also where people can mess up and cause discomfort for others. Alternatively, chatting online or texting doesn’t have nearly the same impact for the same transgression. Companies use things like CIPHR HR Software to lessen the awkwardness of communication with others while boosting productivity, but sometimes, good ole’ person-to-person interactions is the only way to get things done.
Face-to-face communication is the top of the hierarchy of potentially awkward situations, but video meetings can make a close second (phone calls are up there too, but at least an awkward silence during a phone call doesn’t entail actually seeing the other person). Video meetings and conferencing can be used for a multitude of different tasks, school, personal and business related. Yet awkward situations can arise in either instance. Avoiding uncomfortable situations while on a video call with friends or family is not usually a big deal (it’s mainly a personal desire to avoid the situation and most often doesn’t incur significant consequences). But committing an error in social custom, business etiquette or any other unwritten code of conduct while participating in a business meeting can have dire consequences.
What to Do If You Mess up
The fact of the matter is, you will make a mistake at some point; everyone does. Depending on the circumstances the initial mistake is often not the problem; the real problem usually comes from how the person who makes the mistake handles the aftermath. It’s important to put things in perspective, according to Psychology Today. Quite often, the mistake you made is not serious and chances are many people might not even notice it. But if someone does notice, you should remember that what’s done is done, and you can’t change the past. What you can do, however, is apologize, especially if what you did had any negative effect on the situation. In addition, laughing at yourself is a great way to ease the tension and set the other person at ease, as long as the circumstances are conducive to a laugh. Whatever you do, do not try to make excuses; most people will see right through them and this will make the situation worse by showing you to be unwilling to own up to your own mistakes. Of course, there are some gaffes you could commit that might be unfixable, period, especially if you’re in a business situation. But for the most part, as long as you think before you speak and don’t do anything that could be construed as offensive, any awkward situations created by your actions should be easy enough to laugh off or apologize away as long as you are sincere.
Avoiding the Situation in the First Place
While everyone is human and everyone makes mistakes, trying to avoid committing them in the first place is your best plan of action. When in meetings, either face-to-face or video conference via Blue Jeans Network, it’s incredibly important to hold yourself in a way that tells your bosses you are paying attention, listening and focused on what is being discussed, according to Today. Body language is incredibly telling, according to Nonverbal Group. Anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of communication is transmitted through nonverbal cues. This means that the way you move, your facial expressions, your hand movements, leg jitters and any other body movement can communicate your mood and interest in a conversation. This can be good or bad depending on multiple variables like who you’re talking to, what you’re talking about, how lenient that person is and plenty more. Self-control is important, so make sure you are capable of it. If you’re ever unsure of your ability to hold your own during a video meeting, then it can be useful to practice. It’s actually a very mature and responsible habit to practice speaking or acting for when you might be in an interview or video meeting. It may be clichéd, but practice does make perfect. It’s also incredibly important to keep calm; don’t let any small mistakes or your nerves distract you, and if you do make a mistake just get over it and move on, according to US News. Look directly into the camera. You can’t actually have eye contact through a video screen, but looking through the camera instead of the screen will show the other person you are intent, focused and interested. If you are participating in the meeting or interview from home, make sure you wear appropriate clothing; showing up on screen in a t-shirt is not a good idea. And above all, watch your language; not just swearing, but any slang or jargon that might be seen as either immature or overly casual will not help you at all.
How to Save Money For Traveling!
By focusing on how to save money for traveling, you can join these guys in Europe, or wherever you endeavor to go!
With graduation looming at the end of your upcoming senior year, you have big plans. Instead of strolling off the stage with your diploma and marching straight into a cubicle, you’re going to hit the road on a multi-month (maybe multi-year?) trek of exploration and discovery around the world. You want to do this while you are young and physically able to climb mountains, crawl through ruins, discover obscure mysterious islands and endure rough and tumble night buses, and for this, we applaud you.
Far too many people wait until retirement when their health has failed them, leaving them unable to fulfill all the dreams that they had put off for countless decades. One reality of travel that is constant, no matter how slim your budget, is that you need to have sufficient money to travel for any length of time.
Economy class fares cost the same for all of us, so in this final year of school, you need to acquire the eye of the tiger when it comes to saving cash from whatever job you have (if you don’t, start looking).
The following five tips will show you how to save money for traveling in no time, allowing you to get to the fun part of travel: planning out all your amazing adventures!
1) Stop eating out
Bear in mind that this doesn’t mean to stop eating: we all need adequate nutrition to survive. What this tip does prescribe is this: no more lunches at Chipotle, midnight pizza runs, or hungover breakfasts at your local sports bar. Look up some beginner recipes and start making food for yourself. Start off simple, then branch out to more complex meals. Soon, you will be eating better than ever, while spending considerably less dough than you were before. Talk about a win-win proposition!
2) Wave goodbye to your cable company
With abundant free entertainment on Youtube, Vimeo and Reddit, and cost-effective options on Netflix, Hulu and iTunes, why are you still shoveling your cash into your cable company’s furnace for the sake of a few measly channels? Endure the 30 minute phone call you’ve been dreading and cut the cord tomorrow, and watch as all that wasted capital begins piling up in your account instead of padding the wallet of some greedy CEO.
3) Cut back on drinking (and when you must, do it at home)
While going dry would have a dramatically positive effect on your finances, we realize that the college experience is often drenched in booze. So instead of cutting out the alcohol altogether, go out once per week maximum instead of the multiple nights per week that you are doing now. If you normally go out once per week, then take alternating weekends off from the bottle. Band together with potential travel companions and find fun, non-alcoholic things to do on those days to make adherence easier for everybody.
On weeks when you do drink, opt to stay home and avoid the expense of cover charges, marked-up alcohol prices and expensive cab fares. Â Instead, have your friends over to your house, and host the party there instead!
4) Seek out freelance work
With all that free time between classes (trust us, you’ll be looking back at this surplus time fondly when you enter the real world), you likely have time to find a second job, or failing that, a freelance gig on the side. Got a way with words? Become a freelance writer. Skilled in the art of editing/manipulating photos? Flog your Photoshop wizardry to the people of the internet in return for monetary compensation. $200 here, $600 there … it all adds up fast.
5) With a month left to go, sell everything that won’t fit in your backpack
With your plane tickets booked and your preliminary plans getting you excited, one last thing you can do to top off the pile of gold in your vault is to sell off all your stuff. Furniture, trinkets, gadgets, kitchen ware … anything that doesn’t fit in your backpack, or will have a practical use on the road – GONE. Sentimental items should be boxed and stored at your parent’s house or at the home of a trusted friend, but all that other stuff? Liquidate it into sweet, sweet spending cash!
How to write your resume
Want to get an interview with an employer like this dude? By learning how to write your resume effectively, you’ll get to this step quicker!
Your senior year is just over the horizon, and you’re scared witless. For three or four years, you have gone to class and learned everything there is to know about your chosen field, socialized with your fellow peers via clubs, fraternities/sororities, and volunteer organizations, and through it all, you’ve had a blast.
However, this chapter in your life story is drawing to a close, and the start of your working life is within sight. While you have the youthful drive to take on the problems that employers need solved, you have to first introduce yourself in a formal and professional manner. Of all the tools used to accomplish this, the resume has held fast through the decades as one of the most important of these. Companies use it to assess not only your raw skills, but your organizational abilities, attention to detail, as well as many other cues that reveal to them the type of candidate that you are.
Want to learn how to not only ensure that you are shooting yourself in the foot by committing an innocent mistake, or forgetting to include essential information? This article will cover how to write your resume, plus a few extras that will help you establish an edge in the 21st century world in which we live.
List your accomplishments
The central role of a resume to communicate everything you have to offer a potential employer, so include information on anything worthwhile that you have accomplished in the past few years. This obviously includes work, academic degrees and internship experience, but also include volunteer work (displays additional skills + your concern for society at large) and clubs (shows that you socialize, making it more likely that you play well with others).
Target the content of your resume towards a specific job or job type
Not everything that you have done in your past will relate well to certain positions. For example, your involvement in your universities’ video gaming club may not matter to a recruiter for a standard office job, but it becomes a big plus if you are pursuing a job as a programmer in the gaming industry.
Proofread your completed resume militantly
Once you have finished your resume check through multiple times and make sure that there are no misspelled words, misplaced words (many errant keystrokes when typing will result in a properly spelled word that is another word altogether from what you originally intended), or other tragedies of grammar. We don’t mean to intimidate you, but resumes with these miscues often get deleted on sight, as it is perceived as a lack of attention to detail on your part.
Leave a link to an online supplement to your resume
While the tips above have been repeated ad infinitum through the ages, change is ripping through the world of employment like a blustery gale. To avoid being sunk by this maelstrom of change, adjust your sails by enlisting the services of online accompaniment to resumes like about.me or LinkedIn.
The former provides you an online slate to express yourself in a way that paper resumes do not allow, while the latter provides social proof to your claims of experience from your colleagues, professors and peers.
Create a portfolio
If you are in a field that is is dominated by media or the visual arts, cobbling together a portfolio to go with your resume will put you heads and shoulder above those that are aimlessly carpet bombing resumes everywhere.
By detailing your best and most representative work, be it in the form of a web page showing off your creations, a Vimeo submission that demonstrates your cinematography skills in action, or a Flickr account that bears witness to your unmatched eye for photography, selling yourself to a prospective business becomes infinitely easier.
Experiment with alternate formats/strategies
In today’s increasingly congested job market, doing the same old thing as everyone else is a sure way to avoid getting noticed. Exciting and eye-popping templates abound throughout the internet, giving your submission to a business a look that will grant you a closer examination than other candidates. You could also write a proposal letter to an employer, explaining exactly how you would solve a problem in their field, or if you are so bold, you could cold call an important person in a position of influence and persuade them how you would add value to their organization from day 1.
This might be scarier than hitting send on a hundred resume e-mails and waiting for the phone to ring, but you’ll likely find yourself prospering in an entry-level position while your friends pile on more debt by going to graduate school because they couldn’t find a job after getting their undergrad degree.
