It’s also important that people wanting to enter the industry have relevant experience in the area they want to enter in the Australia mining industry. The market is getting very competitive with some companies getting over 500 applicants or more for one position. Especially with the amount of media that the mining industry is receiving on current affair programs in Australia and New Zealand regarding all the money to be made in the industry. It’s making it a lot harder finding position, especially unskilled mining jobs and also finding companies that will take on people with no previous mining experience. It’s not as easy as it used to be in entering the mines. More work is being mechanically assisted therefore skilled people are required rather than the old days in the industry when a lot of unskilled positions were available.
Also certain skills and trades are in more demand than others. Mothers and Fathers reading this should take some notes and direct your kid in the right directions when they are planning to leave school and enter the work force or university study. If your kid is not interested in university study and wants to leave school get them into a training scheme with a company that will give them a trade after a few years that will in return earn them over 100,000 a year and only working two thirds of the year in the mining industry in Australia. Also university study can be planned and the end result will be more rewarding. Students with a Mining Engineering Degree’s are getting snapped up quicker than they are being graduated. There is an 18% vacancy rate in this area and top students are getting sign on agreements of up to 10,000 dollars like sporting super stars with some of the large mining companies in Australia as well as a 100,000 starting off salary.
Getting back to relevant experience; Mining companies want to hire people that have done the particular job back in the cities and are passionate about their job. Its costs a lot hiring a person, and putting the person through the inductions fully paid and then ongoing training, the last thing they want is the person to quit their job after a few weeks.
A lot of people tell me they have an HR and want to drive trucks? But they don’t have any experience driving trucks in the city let alone on a mine site. Agencies won’t even look at your application if you don’t have mining experience of 2-3 years. A lot of their positions are fly in fly out and are filling a vacancy that is important for production to run properly. If production is not running efficiently, it’s going to costs the company money. A lot of the big companies don’t have time to train people on the job site any more. This is the same with people wanting to enter the industry as a cleaner on a mining camp. The hiring companies want people are experience in this field as its costs them a lot to train people and put them through inductions. If people have several years experience in this field, it shows the company they are passionate about this job as they want people that are going to stay with them for a long time and are not just using a cleaning job in a mining camp to gain a dump truck job. This is a big NO for the hiring cleaning companies in the mining industry and they have tough interview procedures to stop people entering the cleaning industry with the intention of fining a dump truck job.
The way the mines are going you want 2 -3 years experience in a field in your civilian career. If you want a particular job in the mines its best to start now where you live and get some experience. Even if it means driving buses, it’s still related to driving trucks. Bus drivers make good dump truck drivers as they have to be safety conscious during the day which skill is wanted for dump truck drivers to have. This is the same for people that tell me they have driven a digger a few times in the past and planned to get a job driving a digger on a mine site. Hope you have good patience as if this is the only experience you have your going to be waiting for a while. Those diggers on the mine sites are a lot bigger 150 – 700 tonnes. These positions driving dump trucks and diggers are paid well and the employees climbing the company ladder will be getting these positions before you.
It may be easier to find a job with a small sub contractor company that has work on a mine site. They may not pay as much as the big mining companies but they are more likely to hire a person in your situation and this way you get that valuable mining experience.
