Drilling Operator CV Examples & Writing Guide

"Drilling operator" covers several trades that share a rig but not much else: oil and gas drilling (driller, derrickman, roughneck), mostly offshore in the UK, water borehole drilling, ground investigation and environmental drilling, and blast-hole drilling in quarries. Say which one you do in the first line, because a hiring superintendent will not guess. This sample is a North Sea driller who started on water boreholes. The name and employers are made up.

Rig hiring is fast and it is mostly about risk. The superintendent or toolpusher reading your CV is trying to answer four questions in under a minute.

• Are your tickets current? Well control (IWCF or IADC WellSharp, at the level that matches the position you want), offshore survival training (BOSIET or FOET) with an offshore medical, H2S, and first aid. Put the expiry month next to each one. An expired well control certificate takes you out of the running for a driller's position immediately.
• What have you actually drilled? Rig type and horsepower, depths, vertical or horizontal, formations or fields, and whether it was oil and gas, water borehole, ground investigation or blast-hole. "Operated drilling equipment" tells them nothing.
• What is your safety record? Recordable incidents, near-miss reporting, dropped objects, stop-the-job authority used. If you have a clean record on your shift, say the number of years and the crew size.
• Can you hold a crew together? A driller supervises three to five people on a moving drill floor. Toolbox talks, risk assessments and training new hands are the evidence.

“The first thing I check is the well control ticket and the date on it. Then I look for depth and rig type. If a CV says ten years of drilling and never names a rig, a depth or a basin, I assume the guy was a roughneck who is rounding up.”

Three or four lines. Name the position you hold, the rig, the depth and one number. Use a career objective only if you are trying to move between drilling sectors or you have just finished your first year as a roughneck.

The left column is what most drilling CVs look like. The right column is the same duty with the rig, the depth or the number attached.

Numbers to reach for: metres drilled per 24 hours, total depth, horizontal section length, trip times, connection times, non-productive time percent, wells or boreholes completed, days without a recordable incident, crew size. Do not claim a rate you cannot back up in an interview, because the toolpusher will ask how you got it.

Give tickets their own block near the top with the issuing body and the expiry. This is the section a drilling recruiter reads first, so do not bury it under education.

• Well control: IWCF (the certificate most often asked for in the North Sea) or IADC WellSharp, at introductory, driller or supervisor level. Match the level to the position you are applying for and show the expiry month.
• Offshore safety and survival: OPITO BOSIET with CA-EBS, renewed through FOET, plus MIST if you are new to the UK offshore sector.
• H2S training, with a face-fit test record for your respirator if you have one.
• An offshore medical for North Sea work. Onshore, a CSCS card for construction and ground investigation sites, and for quarry drilling the quarry's own induction and training records.
• First aid: Emergency First Aid at Work or First Aid at Work, with the expiry date.
• Driving licence: Category C or C+E with Driver CPC if you drive rigs or support lorries onshore. Say if your licence is clean.
• For water borehole and ground investigation work, there is no state-style drilling licence in the UK. Ground investigation contractors usually ask for a BDA audit card and a land drilling NVQ. Name only what you actually hold.
• For environmental drilling on contaminated land, list any contaminated land and asbestos awareness training you have completed.

Name the equipment, not the qualities. A superintendent can teach attitude; they cannot teach a new hand to trip pipe safely in a week.

• Rigs and equipment: AC and mechanical rigs by horsepower, platform and jack-up drilling packages, top drive, kelly and rotary table, iron roughneck, pipe handling system, BOP stack and accumulator, mud pumps, shale shakers, centrifuge
• Drilling technique: directional and horizontal drilling, sliding and rotating, weight on bit and RPM control, bit selection, hole cleaning, tripping and casing runs, fishing basics
• Water borehole and ground investigation: mud rotary, air rotary, down-the-hole hammer, cable percussion, sonic, window sampling, SPT testing, borehole development, gravel pack, grouting
• Fluids: mud weight, viscosity and filtrate checks, polymer and bentonite systems, lost circulation material
• Safety systems: well control and shut-in procedures, task risk assessment, permit to work, isolation and lockout, dropped object prevention, stop-the-job authority, confined space entry
• Records: IADC daily drilling reports, bit and mud records, borehole records for the British Geological Survey, borehole logs
• Crew: pre-shift toolbox talks, training roughnecks, competency sign-off, handover to the opposite shift

Nobody starts as a driller. You start as a roustabout or roughneck, and contractors take on new starters regularly because turnover is high. Your CV has one job: convince them you will still be there in three months.

1. 1Get BOSIET with CA-EBS and H2S training before you apply. They are short courses and they let a contractor put you offshore without waiting.
2. 2Get an offshore medical and, if you are aiming at onshore borehole or ground investigation drilling, a Category C licence. It moves you up the list on day one.
3. 3Show physical, outdoor, shift-based work from your past: construction, farm work, tyre fitting, warehouse, the armed forces. Give hours, weights and shift patterns.
4. 4Say plainly that you will work 12-hour shifts on a 2/3 or 3/3 rotation, and that you can pass a drug and alcohol test.
5. 5Put any mechanical skill you have on the page: welding, hydraulics, diesel engines, slinging and signalling, rigging, forklift.

• One page for roustabouts, roughnecks and derrickmen, two pages at most for a driller with a long list of rigs and wells.
• Header line: position, tickets (well control, BOSIET, offshore medical), rotation you will work, and whether you have a passport for international work.
• Reverse-chronological with month and year. Rig work has gaps; a short line saying "rig stacked, contractor released crew" beats an unexplained six months.
• Add a short "Rigs and wells" list if your experience spans several contractors: rig type, horsepower, depths and basins in one line each.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status. UK drilling applications, onshore or offshore, do not need them.
• Many contractors take applications through an online system, so keep it plain: standard headings, no tables, no columns, PDF unless they ask for Word.

Take these from the advert when they describe work you have really done.

• driller, drill rig operator, assistant driller, derrickman, roughneck, roustabout
• well control, shut-in, BOP, accumulator, kick detection
• top drive, rotary table, iron roughneck, tripping, casing run
• horizontal drilling, directional drilling, horizontal section, TVD, measured depth
• mud rotary, air rotary, down-the-hole hammer, cable percussion, sonic
• non-productive time, rate of penetration, metres per day
• toolbox talk, permit to work, stop-the-job authority, dropped object prevention
• rig move, rig-up, rig-down, 3/3 rotation