live the mining life
I have lost count of the number of people that approach me saying, “I’ve done everything I am supposed to do and I can’t get an interview”. When I ask what they have done? I get the standard list, especially from people in the Eastern states;
“I have my front end loader ticket, my truck ticket, confined spaced ticket, full medical, the S11, working at heights, passed drug test and first aid ticket”
Everything that I do, to help people get jobs, is in the Hardrock area of the industry, so let’s look at it form one of these large Hardrock mines point of view. These mines are all having to hire new starters at the moment to fill the lower paid jobs. Jobs that can put you on a career path to an income of $25k a month once you get to the top (I know a number of miners making this sort of money and because of a lack of experienced staff it’s only going up).
From the Hardrock employers point of view;
All the tickets are useless to me as an employer, the rules say I have to train and ticket everyone I employ on site. Not only that, we must keep records of this tickets/training/procedures on site for inspection.
Next, the confined space ticket, the only place we need that ticket is cleaning the tanks on the mill, not the mine site. Even if I need you to have this ticket I’m going to put you through it myself, using my own staff to make sure that all the paperwork is in order for inspection.
The same can be said for a working at heights ticket, HR may like that you have it but I bet you end up doing it again as part of the onsite induction. Mining employers really do take their obligation to have this paper work in order very seriously.
As for the medical and drug test, I want you to see my company doctor and do a drug test at that same doctors. Again it’s all about the paper work, as the employer I don’t want paperwork from lots of doctors, I want my own paperwork from my doctor, to show that I have done the right thing as the employer.
Lastly the S11 or General induction, is only required by coal mines in QLD, this fact is apparently lost on new starters. It speaks volumes to the employers, about a person’s knowledge of the industry and what it is we do on a mine site.
So that’s what Hardrock employers don’t want, it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t tell you what they did want in a new starter. They want you to have;
Mining knowledge, if you can talk to the employer about their own systems of work then this goes a long way to giving the Foreman the confidence to hire. I have included a video at the top of this page showing what I mean by mining knowledge.
The employer wants you to have a manual drivers licence to work underground and a HR licence to work on the surface.
They will like that you have done a first aid ticket, even though there is a good chance that the employer will put you through their own train again, as part of their site induction.
As an employer, I want to see that you have been in steady work. It really doesn’t matter what sort of work because you don’t have to be super fit to be a miner any more. They don’t call it “arm chair mining” for nothing. I want people that have done night shift, will work weekends and have worked 10 or 12hour shifts. People that are working in retail often make the swap to mining easily, as these people already have OH&S training from the large companies that they work for. This training transfers well to what happens on a mine site.
It’s like anything else, if you have what the employer wants then they will hire. The problem is that there are too many sites out there that think they know the industry when they clearly don’t. The reason that I am able to offer a pathway to follow, is that I have a WA Shift boss ticket and have been in the industry for more than 20years. Having been both a worker and part of management I know exactly how the system works, what the employer wants and how to get the employers attention.
I call it my “Do it yourself” package and for $495 it provides a pathway to employment in the Hardrock industry for those that follow its steps. There has never been a better time, with 100’s of these low paid (between $300-$500 a day) jobs needed to be filled on large Hardrock mines all around the country. If you want to sign up, follow the “Do it yourself” link or if you want to talk about this more leave a comment in the link to the left of the page. No matter what happens, I wish everyone reading this, the best of luck trying to get their dream mining job in the future. Good luck I hope it happens soon.
The talk of replacing miners is everywhere in the media today, but how much automation do our Australian mines have left to do? The short answer is none, because all these advancements we read about in overseas mines have already happened here. The large advancements in automation that are being reported on around the world were all developed here, in the Australian Hardrock industry more than a decade ago. Only now are mining companies from around the world adopting the equipment and mining methods of our industry.
The big advancement was the remote underground loader that can drive itself back to the stock pile once the operator has got the bucket of dirt. That’s right the boggers (underground loaders) still need an operator to get a bucket of rock and this is the story not being told. Yes, some machines can work by themselves but what happens when something goes wrong, how much damage can be done? When you are talking about mining equipment, lots. Often the cost of repair is as much as an operator would cost for a whole year or more. Take what happen when they tried to get a loader to bog its own bucket of rock. It ended up stripping the front tyres, at $18,000 a tyre it didn’t take long for them to give up and the technology hasn’t advance any further since. Yet we still get stories from around the world about these “new technologies” that are going to replace people working in our mines.
As far as an underground mining crew goes, no one, including the truck drivers, are going to be replace any time soon. Charge up still needs people to fill the holes and tie everything in, service crew has to plum the mine with vent, power, air & water, offsiders to load bolts or rods, boggers to move the rock and nippers to run around after them all. What about the drills I hear you say? Yes, a lot drills do operate on an auto pilot like system but still require an operator, in the same way a plane requires a pilot, for when things go wrong. It has been shown that you don’t stay in business long if you let your 3million dollar drill rigs run unattended for any length of time, companies that have tried this all failed in a short amount of time.
The current method of Hardrock mining isn’t going to change any time soon, so anyone thinking about getting into the industry should look at doing it soon, as there is no competition for someone that has the right mining knowledge. If you wait to see this information on the news or get it from the cab driver, you will have left it too late and will now be competing with thousands of people. If you want more information about how I can help you get into the Australian Hardrock underground mining industry check out our “Do it yourself” package or leave your details in the link provided. Good luck hope you get your dream job soon.
Having read a number of different articles about jobs in the Hardrock mining industry that just give generic answers to many of the important questions, I wanted to pull back the curtain and explain who is hiring and why. There are over 100 large Hardrock mines all around Australia, these mines all use the same systems of work/procedures to mine different metals. This means once a person is trained on one of these large Hardrock mines, they become employable on all the others.
These mines are run by a small number of employers. Made up of owner operators (like Newmont and Goldfields that use their own workforce) and contract companies (like Barminco, Byrnecut, Pybar and Redpath). Today these employers find themselves in the position of having to hire new starters to fill the lowest paid jobs on their mine sites. I really don’t want to call them new starter jobs because all employers will hire an experienced person over a new starter, if they are available. I call them the lowest paid jobs on crew because they are, even though these jobs pay between $300-$500 a day.
So how did the employers get here?
From the end of 2012 to 2015 a number of these large mines were put into care and maintenance, this forced large numbers of miners to be laid off. The number of large mines dropped to as low as 80, this meant that miners had nowhere to go if their mine was one of the ones that closed. Much like a game of musical chairs, when the music stopped at the end of 2012, if you didn’t have a seat you were in trouble. Many miners got large pay outs from a number of the own operators that closed, but most and this is important, moved on from the industry into other careers.
This bust reduced the experienced workforce by 20%, most of who moved into other jobs that allowed them to be home every night. Then at the end of 2015, when a number of the large mines reopen, hundreds of miners were once again required. Employers thought that all those people that were tossed out in 2012 would come running back, they didn’t. Left with no choice, the employers had to fill the gaps to keep the mine running. This meant new starters had to be hired to fill the lowest paid roles. Employers have been trying to catch up ever since, but when 3 out of 5 new starter fail in the first 6months it becomes an ongoing problem.
You only have to look at the employment ads to see how often they are repeated. Once you find out, that to run one of these large mines effectively, the employers need 12 to 50 truck drivers, 3 to 12 Nippers, 12 to 36 Service/paste fill crew members and 3 to 24 diamond drillers offsiders on each site, it’s not hard to see how the employers have got into trouble. The numbers will vary depending on the mines size and number of crews but this gives you some idea of why the industry is constantly looking for new starters to fill these low paid jobs. There are hundreds of these jobs going constantly around the country.
With the number of mines expected to grow to well over 120 by the end of 2018 the problems for the employers isn’t going to stop any time soon. This means that the opportunities for people to start their mining career have never been better. So if you want to give it a go then get yourself trained in the Hardrock systems of work (really important to getting the job and surviving the first six months) and start applying. Any questions leave me a message in the link across the page. Good luck.