Professional roles

Engineers moving to site: what the FIFO screen looks for

Graduates and office-based engineers going out to site. What I look for in the first thirty seconds.

By The Hiring Desk · Senior HR Professional · October 2026

Engineers are some of the most qualified people who apply for site roles, and some of the most likely to get binned on the first read. Not because they cannot do the job. Because their CV was written for an office, and I am hiring for a site.

Who this is for

Graduates looking at their first role. Engineers in design, consulting or government who want to go out to site. Engineers from other industries, like manufacturing or utilities, moving into mining or construction. The job titles vary: site engineer, field engineer, project engineer, maintenance engineer, planner, scheduler.

What the screen is looking for

Site exposure, in plain words. Have you been on a live site? Even a vacation placement, a commissioning trip, a shutdown you supported from the office. Put it near the top. An engineering CV with no site in it reads as a design CV, and it goes in the design pile.

The work, not just the discipline. “Civil engineer” tells me very little. “Managed RFIs and ITPs for a bulk earthworks package” tells me you know what a site engineer does all day. Use the words from the ad. If it says shutdowns, give me a shutdown. If it says quality, give me your inspection and test plans.

People on the tools. Site engineers spend half their day with supervisors and crews. Show me you can work with them. One line about running a pre-start, coordinating a subcontractor or sorting a problem at the work face does more than any line about stakeholder management.

Safety, briefly and properly. Not a paragraph. One concrete example of a hazard you identified or a change you made. Engineers who treat safety as somebody else’s job do not last on site, and I am screening for that.

The roster. Engineers moving from an office are the most likely to underestimate it. Tell me you have thought it through.

Graduates

Many of the big contractors and operators run graduate intakes once a year, and applications often close months before the start date. If you miss the window, you wait a year. Set the alerts early, and look at the contractors as well as the mine owners, because they hire more graduates than people realise.

A graduate CV should lead with your placements and any site time, then your degree. Your thesis goes below that, in one line, unless it is directly relevant to the role.

Moving from office or consulting to site

Your experience is valuable. You just have to translate it. Pull out every time your work touched a site: inspections, site visits, commissioning, defects, construction support. Lead with those. Then show the bigger picture underneath. And be ready for the question “why site, and why now?” A clear answer about the roster and your plan beats a vague one about wanting a change.

Where to look

The engineering and construction contractors, the mining contractors and the operators all hire engineers, and many advertise on their own careers pages before the job boards. The Employer Map in the FIFO guide lists them by state and type.

If your CV has been going out for weeks with no calls, it is usually the top third. The Hiring-Side CV Review tells you exactly what the screen sees, and rewrites that block for you.

From Office to Site coverFrom Office to Site · A$29Site admin, document control, engineering and accounts roles: what the screen looks for, the words your CV needs, and the way in.Get it →

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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.