Getting a Start in Mining

Unfortunately one of the hardest things to do in Australia today is to get a start in the mining industry. At the moment with all the stumbling blocks in the way it seems the only way to get into the industry is to know someone that can help, or take pot luck and send your resume into every job available and hope for the best.

It’s not like you can go down to the local TAFE and enrol in a course. The employers only want experience people and you can’t get experience until you get a job.  The circle starts from here. What are these key stumbling blocks?

The interview

Time and Competition

Your Resume

Finding a mining job

Your experience

Many of these stumbling blocks are entangled with each other as is demonstrated below, this important fact is often over looked by people costing them not only time but money.

 

The interview
It’s important to show your knowledge of safety and to be able to show the employer that you can be trained in the mining tasks required. The safety questions are normally asked about your current workplace or a workplace that you have worked in before. To show you can be trained in mining tasks you need to use your experience, this can include a mining course you have done. Any mining experience is well regarded.

 

Time and Competition
Like it or not there are a lot of people trying to find a mining job. This means there is a lot of competition for a limited amount of good paying jobs. Once you decide to try to get a mining job it could take days, weeks, months or years, it is different for every person. The people that do the best are the people that have confidence in themselves to succussed.

 

Your Resume
The most important thing a good resume has to do is too get read by HR so then you get the interview. It has to cut through and in mining the best way of doing that is to show what you are offering on the top half of the first page of your resume, you need to show your experience.

 

Find a mining Job
Finding your leads is important and time critical, once an ad is posted you need to act as soon as possible. The trick is to get your resume in the first 50 that way it will at least get looked at. Now it is up to your resume to grab the HR’s attention and for this you need to have your experience on the top of the first page.

 

Your Experience
If you have never worked on a mine site before then the employers are looking for people that can demonstrate they can be trained in the mining tasks required. To show you can be trained in mining tasks you need to use your experience, this can include a mining course or any formal training you have done for a previous job. Any mining knowledge gained from a course is well regarded as long as the knowledge can be backed up in the interview.

As you can see, the over laps between the stumbling blocks have been highlighted and show how many of the tasks are entangled, each task relying on the quality of another to get the result required. This is why you need to know the information in the courses/training required.