Getting into FIFO

Before you pay for a FIFO course, package or resume service, read this

What you are really buying, the red flags, and five questions to ask anyone selling FIFO help. Including me.

By The Hiring Desk · Senior HR Professional · October 2026

Search for how to get into FIFO and within a day you will be shown a course, a package, a resume service and a “private group”, some of them costing more than your first round of tickets. Some are fine. Some are not. I sell a guide and a CV review myself, so take this with that in mind, but here is how I would judge any of it, mine included, from the hiring side of the desk.

Know what you are actually buying

Everything in this market is one of three things: information (a guide, a course, videos), a document (a written or reviewed CV), or access (a group, a call, a “network”). None of them is a job. Nobody legitimate can sell you a job, an interview or a placement, because the people who decide that are recruiters and hiring managers inside the companies and the labour hire firms, and they do not take a cut from course sellers.

Walk away if you see these

A job or interview guarantee. If anyone promises one, they are either lying or about to charge you to apply to the same jobs you can apply to yourself.

Tickets bundled into a package at a mark-up. Tickets come from registered training organisations. Look the provider up on training.gov.au and book direct. A card from an unlisted provider is a card sites will not accept.

“Insider contacts” or “we know the recruiters”. Recruiters are not in anyone’s pocket. If someone could get you hired by ringing a mate, they would not need to sell a course.

Pressure. Spots closing tonight, price going up at midnight, a countdown timer. The mining industry is not closing its doors this week.

Reviews you cannot check. A wall of first names and five stars proves nothing. Look for reviews on the platform that took your money, or ask in the FIFO groups.

Ask these five questions before you pay

Who wrote it, and have they ever hired anyone? Someone who did a few swings can tell you what camp is like. Only someone who has screened applications can tell you why yours is not getting a call.

Can I see inside first? A good guide or course will show you a chapter or a lesson. If it will not, ask why.

What exactly do I get, and in what format? A PDF, a video course, a call, a rewritten document? How long do I keep it?

Does it promise a job? If yes, see above.

Is it cheaper than the thing it is replacing? A guide should cost less than one ticket. A CV service should cost less than the wages you lose waiting for a callback.

The order I would spend in

Free first: work out where you actually stand before you spend a dollar. The two-minute readiness check does that, and so does honestly reading the ad you are going for against your CV. Then the tickets your target role actually asks for, from a provider on training.gov.au, usually White Card and first aid first. Then cheap, specific information: a guide, a few good blog posts, the FIFO groups. Only then, if the CV is still not getting calls, pay for help with the CV itself, and pay someone who screens CVs, not just someone who writes them.

What a CV service should actually do

A rewrite is not the point. Most FIFO CVs that fail the screen have the right experience hidden in the wrong place. The fix is usually a block at the top of page one, not a new document. Before you pay anyone for a CV, ask whether they will tell you why the current one is failing. If they cannot, they are guessing, and a nicer font is not going to change the thirty seconds it gets.

If you want to see what that looks like, read what a recruiter sees in thirty seconds, or read chapter 2 of my guide free before you decide whether it is worth A$49.

The full playbook, from the hiring side

How to Get Into FIFO (and get asked back): the recruiter's screen, the ticket budget planner, your way in by starting point, the CV and interview, and the unwritten rules of your first swing, plus the Employer Map: 50 places to apply. A$49, opens in any browser, yours forever.

Get the guide · A$49Secure checkout · card or PayPal · instant download
Already have a CV and still no callbacks? Send it to the person who would be screening it. The Hiring-Side CV Review: the thirty-second verdict, what is getting it binned, and a rewritten screen block, back within three business days. A$179.

Not ready to buy? Take the free two-minute readiness check first, or grab the free FIFO starter checklist and FIFO CV template.

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About the author. The Hiring Desk is a senior HR professional with twenty years in HR across Australian mining and construction, most of it on the hiring side, who still works in the industry, which is why there is a pen name and no surname. Nothing published here is about any one employer; it is how the industry screens, hires and runs sites, from someone still inside it. A FIFO household of her own, onshore and offshore. Author of the The Hiring Desk guides.