Diving as a career...

[sgurino]

Hello there! Have a few questions for you expert divers...

- What are the best places to work in as a dive instructor, considering work permit limitations for EU Citizens?

- What range of salary should I expect in those places?

- How much experience do you need before you get a well paid job?

- Do you think 2 years of hard work may be good enough for a job in a cruise? Less? More?

- Have you ever worked in a diving cruise or do you know anybody who has? how is it?

- Once an instructor, would you identify a particular career path to follow? Maybe
having certain qualifications may make you more employable than others?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[Maule]

Let me add this for Squrino, try real hard to be nice and don't post the negative things I typically see on these threads.

 

[pacchill]

Have you looked into a PADI Career Development Center? The shop I dived with in Thailand was a CDC, and I spoke with quite a few interns there. If you get on a program like that I think you get like a referral through PADI and can work wherever they need DMs or Instructors. There are jobs all over the world for DMs, as far as pay goes... Who cares, if you love diving and diving is you job. Do you really need that much money? By the way, I am not endorsing PADI or any other agency, just using them as an example.
PacChill

 

[Tegg]

How many dives have you completed currently?

Just trying to see what your background is before offering any ideas.

 

[DiveGal01]

You won't make lots of money in a diving career unless you own your own shop - and even then, you won't get rich. If your passion is diving, then by all means, go for it. It also helps if you are single (and no kids). Diving careers usually don't offer things like health insurance and retirement plans. I worked on a live-a-board, briefly. We were paid $100 for the week plus tips, worked our butts off with very little sleep. We had a small cabin to live in and were fed great meals. The diving was awesome. We worked 6 weeks on and 2 weeks off. Most of the crew I worked with were great, but a couple were just pains in the butt. (and a boat's not a easy place to get away from people you don't want to be around)

Jobs are relatively easy to come by if you are extremely flexible and reliable, but again, they don't pay much. And you don't need a lot of experience to get the jobs. Basically, you need your instructor cert and paid liability insurance. If you're willing to travel, there are a lot of opportunities out there. If you get a job at a resort or on a large cruise boat, you will be doing a lot of Discover Scuba and Discover Scuba Diving with newbies. If you're a people person, you'll do well with tips. If you aren't, well, you get the idea.

I use my instructors cert to introduce others to my passion - scuba diving, not to pay the bills. That's what my Monday - Friday job is for. I especially love to work with kids.

As far as additional qualifications, Emergancy First Repsonse is a great cert to teach (you can market this to non-diving folks), also the more specialy courses you can teach (Nitrox, night, deep, photo, etc), the more employable you will be. You should get a minimum rating of Master Scuba Diver Training.

I'm certified through PADI. They have some good info on their web site: http://www.padi.com

I hope this helps. If you'd like some more info, PM me. I'd be more than happy to share some of my experiences. I love teaching and I'm really glad that I got into this as a side job/hobby.

 

[save-money-diving]

if u want a diving career then think long and hard b4 u jump in cos u will never be rich.(no s**t) prob the worst paid jobs in the world. but then again if we all only taught to become rich then there would be no such thing as instructors.. however if u want to live on a paradise island in the middle of the ocean then go for it. i did and i love my job, meeting new people everyday from all over the world is great. passinig on the knowlege that i have learned over the yrs. i never thought for 1 minute that i could stand up in front of a class of people and talk for hours. where i live at the moment i can open my front door each morning to a seaview that many people pay a fortune to see. and as for the diving. well its fantastic, i.e whalesharks,various sharks,mantas,turles ect ect. for me this is my second chance in life and i wish i did it 10yrs ago. this is really my perfect job. wouldnt change it for the world...

 

[verybaddiver]

I would like to add a few points to consider:-

1/. As you've heard you certainly won't get rich from the diving industry. You must also consider the intial costs of getting INTO the diving industry, there are hugely expensive in the terms of training, time restraints, insurance costs and equipment costs.

2/. What kind of diving do you want to do? I for one love diving but i'm more interested in the technical and exploration side of it. If currently learning and refining my skills enough to start tech and cave training. These are simply not open to the majority of divers, especially lowly paid ones. The diving you do will mainly be instructing people who are new to the sport and will require alot of attention, meaning you will probably get less out of the dives in terms of sight seeing, personal experience. Also consider the amount of boring pool work you'd do.

3/. workload, i tend to think of divemaster as being the slaves of the dive industry, they get low money, have to do all the work and have to be constantly aware of the new divers they are with. You will be the one who is pointed at first if anything happens to go wrong (yes i know all these forms are signed to aquit you).

I personally am happy doing a job outside diving. Earning enough money to go around the world and dive in different places when i see fit, whilst regualry diving in my local area. In the future i want to advance my training to open up more dive oppurtunities, which are as far as i'm aware rarely experienced by people who make a living purely from the dive industry

 

[DiverDebbie]

SaveMoneyDiving and VeryBadDiver are 2 great examples of complete opposite ends of the spectrum. There's no disputing that it's a lot of work for very little pay, or that we all love diving, otherwise we wouldn't be here on SB, or considering it as a career.
However, just enjoying diving shouldn't be the deciding factor. If you're going to be an instructor you should be a friendly, outgoing, patient, people person, who can actually teach! Too often people may excel at a sport or hobby, but be totally useless and impatient at teaching it to others. You should thoroughly enjoy meeting new people and get satisfaction from watching them experience the underwater world for the first time while learning to dive.
Much also depends on what your priorities are in life. If all the material possessions that come with a fast paced city lifestyle aren't the be all and end all to you, and you are willing to make sacrifices for a completely different, slower paced, less material lifestyle, then perhaps it is the path for you. Otherwise you can always do what I'm doing right now and keep your day job and work part-time as a DM or instructor on the side. At the very least, it will be a good test to see if it's for you or not. I know it's proved to me how much I enjoy it.
Do you ever notice though that many of the high paying jobs are such because they are miserable, boring, high-stress, dangerous, or just plain horrible jobs? If they didn't pay well, who would do them?
As a person who has a decent paid, but rather mundane IT job, sitting in a cubicle in front of a computer all day, living in a perpetually rainy city, I am tired of hearing all the whining about how underpaid and overworked dive pros are. If you aren't happy at it, don't do it, but don't knock it, as there are those who love it.

SaveMoneyDiving.... you are an inspiration... thank you I am thinking of you diving in paradise... <sigh> back to work...

 

[bluefrogfish]

I used to work both in liveaboards and land based operations. I enjoyed both, although working in a liveaboard is hard work and can be very tyring. The ammount and quality of diving you get in a liveaboard is generally better and you get to save more money because you don´t spend much. Working on land, you have some private life that you won´t have at all on a liveaboard.
There are jobs everywhere around the world. But I found that, in the most typical diving destinations, dive operations tend to treat worse the dive pros because they are easily replaced by new workers eager to work there. Of course this is not true for all jobs, an you can find good jobs in places like the Caymans or Sharm el Sheikh too.
If you enjoy diving and don´t care much about money, go for it ! you can always go back to a "normal" dry life.
cheers,

 

[shark_tamer]

I am too considering diving as a career !!

:huh: Someone suggested I apply for a job at Club Med ....:14: :14: