Drilling Operator Resume Examples & Writing Guide

"Drilling operator" covers several trades that share a rig but not much else: oil and gas drilling (driller, derrickhand, roughneck), water well drilling, geotechnical and environmental boring, and blast-hole drilling in quarries and mines. Say which one you do in the first line, because a hiring superintendent will not guess. This sample is a land rig driller who started on water wells. The name and employers are made up.

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

• Are your tickets current? Well control (IADC WellSharp or IWCF, at the level that matches the seat you want), a basic safety orientation such as RigPass or SafeLand, H2S, and first aid. Put the expiry month next to each one. An expired well control card takes you out of the running for a driller's seat immediately.
• What have you actually drilled? Rig type and horsepower, depths, vertical or horizontal, formations or basins, and whether it was oil and gas, water well, geotechnical or blast-hole. "Operated drilling equipment" tells them nothing.
• What is your safety record? Recordables, near-miss reporting, dropped objects, stop-work authority used. If you have a clean record on your tour, 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 floor. Pre-tour meetings, JSAs 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 resume says ten years of drilling and never names a rig, a depth or a basin, I assume the guy was a floorhand who is rounding up.”

Three or four lines. Name the seat you hold, the rig, the depth and one number. Use an objective only if you are trying to move between drilling sectors or you have just finished a floorhand's first year.

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

Numbers to reach for: footage per 24 hours, total depth, lateral length, trip times, connection times, non-productive time percent, wells completed, days without a recordable, 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: IADC WellSharp or IWCF, at introductory, driller or supervisor level. Match the level to the seat you are applying for and show the expiry month.
• Basic safety orientation: IADC RigPass, SafeLand USA or SafeGulf, depending on where you work.
• H2S training to ANSI/ASSP Z390.1, with a fit-tested respirator record if you have one.
• OSHA 10 or OSHA 30. For mining and quarry drilling, MSHA Part 46 or Part 48 new miner and annual refresher training instead.
• First aid, CPR and AED. Some operators also want a bloodborne pathogens module.
• Commercial Driver's License, Class A or B, with any endorsements (tanker, air brakes). Say if you have a clean MVR.
• For water well work, check your state: many states license water well drillers, and some recognize the National Ground Water Association's Certified Well Driller credential. Name only what you actually hold.
• For environmental drilling, 40-hour HAZWOPER with the annual 8-hour refresher.

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

• Rigs and equipment: AC and mechanical land rigs by horsepower, top drive, kelly and rotary table, iron roughneck, hydraulic catwalk, 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 well and geotechnical: mud rotary, air rotary, down-the-hole hammer, hollow-stem auger, sonic, direct push, SPT sampling, well 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, JSA, permit to work, lockout/tagout, dropped object prevention, stop-work authority, confined space entry
• Records: IADC tour sheets, daily drilling reports, bit and mud records, state well completion reports, boring logs
• Crew: pre-tour meetings, training floorhands, competency sign-off, handover to the opposite tour

Nobody starts as a driller. You start as a floorhand or roustabout, and contractors hire green hands constantly because the turnover is high. Your resume has one job: convince them you will still be there in three months.

1. 1Get SafeLand or RigPass and H2S before you apply. Both are one-day courses and they let a contractor put you on location without waiting.
2. 2Get a DOT physical and, if you can, a Class A CDL. It moves you up the list on day one.
3. 3Show physical, outdoor, shift-based work from your past: construction, farm work, tire shop, warehouse, military. Give hours, weights and shift patterns.
4. 4Say plainly that you will work a 12-hour tour on a 14/14 or 21/14 rotation, and that you can pass a drug screen and a background check.
5. 5Put any mechanical skill you have on the page: welding, hydraulics, diesel engines, chain and sling work, rigging, forklift.

• One page for floorhand and derrickhand, two pages at most for a driller with a long list of rigs and wells.
• Header line: seat, tickets, CDL, 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. That is a European CV convention; US and Canadian drilling applications do not use it.
• 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 posting when they describe work you have really done.

• driller, drill rig operator, derrickhand, floorhand, roughneck, motorhand
• well control, shut-in, BOP, accumulator, kick detection
• top drive, rotary table, iron roughneck, tripping, casing run
• horizontal drilling, directional drilling, lateral, TVD, measured depth
• mud rotary, air rotary, down-the-hole hammer, hollow-stem auger, sonic
• non-productive time, rate of penetration, footage per day
• JSA, permit to work, stop-work authority, dropped object prevention
• rig move, rig-up, rig-down, 21/14 rotation