I have recently acquired my MMD and TWIC, and I am wondering where to go from here. I’ve put in a good 45 applications to offshore companies based out of Louisiana and have made countless follow up phone calls, no luck. I thought for a minute Chouest was going to take me on, but it seems they were just keeping me on the back burner. I live in FL, and I want to work in the gulf, I am no good in the cold, hence the reason I moved down here. Any tips would be great. I am trying to find ANY company that will hire me for a Wiper position, but I would also take O/S…not too picky as to it’s been about 6 months of striking on on jobs.
Go to Louisiana in person with your bag packed ready to sail and make the rounds door to door. If you don’t get a job in a week, ask them what you need to do to improve your chances. You might want to spend the next week in school taking BST, Safegulf, HUET etc. Then go door to door again.
Get your STCW BST and knock on doors. Nothing says “wants it” like shaking hands and showing them a couple of pieces of paper that are worth $500 out of pocket.
I’m in FL too and looking to start in the minerals industry as well. The resounding advice I’ve gotten so far is that online apps are about as useless as tits on a bull. I’ll be heading up in April, I’m just saving money now and waiting for my uscg stuff to come in. Let me know how it works out for you.
Go in March. That’s when the companies I talked to told me they are hiring for deckhands.