How Landmen Are Made: The Interns Origin Story

Blogs, LandmanFieldNotes / By / / 3 minutes of reading

This is a follow up post to LandmanLife’s posts The Last Landman – A Career Dead End and The Circle of Landman Life

How I Got Started

I have been in the ‘game’ since the beginning of 2015 and even though I am quickly approaching my tenth year in the industry, I still feel like a rookie.

I got my start as a bright-eyed Energy Management student at the University of Tulsa back in the fall of 2010, watching the shale boom and hearing stories about the amazing door prizes that a Landman could win at any given clay shoot or golf tournament (You get a gun! You get a gun! You get two guns!). I won no guns.

Even though I got an excellent education at Tulsa U (for the official record: far superior to Texas Tech or OU), it wasn’t the degree or the Energy Management program that got me started landmanning (it’s a verb, trust us).

How Landmen Are Made

It was other Landmen…and some chance encounters with them:

The Energy Management program director (a Landman in a past life) that connected me with a mentor. That mentor gave me invaluable insights and some course correction on what I needed to do to be successful in the profession.

Then there was the random chance of sitting next to a (very experienced) Landman at a University event. That eventually led to a summer internship and evolved into a fruitful mentoring relationship that I carried with me even after they didn’t give me a full time job offer.  

It was being lucky enough to interview for my first job with a Landman that I had built a relationship with; who, because he knew me and my ability, was able to go to bat for me with his bosses to get me a job offer that kicked off my career. I will always appreciate his help getting my career started.

I was fortunate to have a manager early in my career that cared about my development and gave me the opportunity to learn and get experience in the middle of a downturn (2015-2016).

While I was down in the dumps in 2020 after getting laid off, I was fortunate enough to meet @LandmanLife, @MassiveFrac and @LandMannery. All of them were hugely influential in helping me ride out 2020 to make sure I stayed doing what I want to be doing (being a Landman).

The Wrap-up

Now I have had my share run-ins with bad Landmen, with big egos, that would have very much liked to try and derail my career, but I have been lucky enough to survive those run-ins because at the end of the day I had a network of relationships with other Landmen that know I am good at my job.

These are just some highlights but there have been countless others across my short time in the business.

It is a well-traveled cliché but the profession is a small profession and relationships matter!

I know I am just one of many Landman origin stories, but I am evidence that it does take Landmen to make more Landmen. I know LandmanLife and I are always interested in talking to or trying to help younger Landmen, but the problem is neither of us can ever find any younger Landmen that haven’t already been ruined by the inner workings of your favorite PubCo Land Department.

If you are a young Landman and you feel out on an island or stuck in a spot where it doesn’t feel like you are learning anything reach out to either me (@JHandimeyer) or @LandmanLife on Twitter. Our DMs are always open.

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