My experience (just shy of 10 years in oil/gas/pipeline) is send it through a known friend/associate any chance you have. Lots of reasons for this. First, Houston oil and gas is a good ole boy industry, and knowing someone helps a ton. You'll always come across the same people, even when they move from company to company. Second, most companies have pretty nice recruiting bonuses, and you can split that with your friend. My small/medium engineering company currently offers $2500 for non-engineering recruits and $5000 for engineers. I am sure that larger companies offer more. I saw earlier comments about hourly rates and such for contract workers. Contract workers make up a fairly big chunk of the workforce. There are also companies that you may work for direct that you get your insurance/401K etc through that will contract you out to their clients as needed. Nice compromise there. As far as hourly rates, different for each company. Smaller companies have lower hourly rates obviously. I'll use myself as an example. I currently work in procurement/inspection services. I was recently asked to come interview with a dedicated inspection firm that is familiar with my work. They did not blink to offer me 30-35% more starting salary, with an additional 10% bump in 6 months if the clients liked my work. If I was to go purely contract I could easily ask for 40-50% more per hour, but there is the lack of 401K, insurance etc that needs to be considered. I am sure as a geologist with experience you could go to a mid/major and make somewhere in the ballpark of $90K without putting up a fight, granted that you have a bachelor's, which I'm sure you do. And if you tell them up front that you're interested in staying with a company and taking advantage of their scholarship/education programs it can boost their offer. Companies are desparate to keep their people these days, and someone telling them out front they are not interested in jumping around can go a long ways.