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 mining course, this is why we wrote one, Introduction to Underground Mining. Mining knowledge is the key to getting mining employment and this training teaches you the exact jobs you will be expected to do on site, in a hardrock underground mine. This is why we have a partnership program to find new starters for mines around Kalgoorlie.

If we have a look at the key stumbling blocks most people face to getting a job, you can see how they over lap and how they can be solved with mining knowledge.

The interview

Time and Competition

Your Resume

Finding a mining job

Your experience

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 (like ours) you have done. Any mining experience is well regarded by employers.

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 and just don’t stop until they have hunted down a job.

Your Resume
The most important thing a good resume has to do, is too get you the interview. It has to cut through and in mining you have 6 seconds to show you know something about mining (you either do or you don’t). The best way of doing this. is to show what you are offering on the top half of the first page of your resume, you need to show your experience. If you do Workready then we do your resume for you, to make it mining friendly so we know its going to be read.

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  (mining knowledge) 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. Buy completing our training packages DIY or Workready you can show the employers that you can be trained in mining industry tasks by being able to answer the mining questions in the interview. Being able to do this shows the employers that you have the experience they required. 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 from the over laps between the stumbling blocks, which have been highlighted, show how many of the tasks are entangled and require knowledge about the industry to be solved. Each task is relying on the quality of the others if you are to get the result required, with all tasks requiring your mining knowledge to be up to speed.

If you think the process looks overwhelming and want help then check out the  Workready package.

If moneys tight (as it is for a lot of us at the moment) and you can follow instructions then checkout our Do It Yourself package. The instructions to make your resume mining friendly and interview prep questions are all in the back of the Australian mining seminar. You just need a manual drivers license, pass a medical, drug test and have a clean police clearance.

Good luck hope you get the job you want and remember the secret to getting a job is mining knowledge