Getting into FIFO

White Card first, then what? The FIFO tickets to buy, in order, on a A$2,000 budget

Having no tickets is the problem. Having the wrong ones is the expensive problem. Here is the order I would buy them in.

By The Hiring Desk · Senior HR Professional · October 2026

The most common money mistake I see from people trying to get into FIFO is not spending too little. It is spending A$4,000 on a bundle of tickets a training company put together, then finding out the roles they are applying for only ask for two of them. After twenty years in HR across Australian mining and construction, most of it on the hiring side, here is the order I would buy them in, and what I would not buy until someone is paying me.

Start with the one everybody needs

The White Card (general construction induction) is the non-negotiable. No White Card, no site, no conversation. It is a one-day course, it does not expire, and it is the cheapest ticket you will ever buy. If you have nothing else, get this before you send a single application, because a CV without it tells the screener you have not started yet.

Do it face to face or through a provider that is actually registered. Which brings me to the thing most people skip.

Check the provider before you pay anyone

Every legitimate training provider in Australia is a Registered Training Organisation with an RTO number, and every one of them is listed on training.gov.au. Type the provider's name in. If they are not there, or the course code they are selling is not on their scope, your ticket is worthless and a recruiter who checks (we do) will bin you for it. Online-only White Cards from interstate providers are the usual trap. If the deal looks too cheap and too easy, that is why.

The second layer: the tickets general site roles actually ask for

For trade assistant, utility and general site roles, the ads keep asking for the same four: Working at Heights, Confined Space, Elevated Work Platform (the EWP yellow card), and a current First Aid certificate. Those four plus the White Card will cover the requirements line of most entry-level ads I have screened. Budget roughly A$2,000 to A$3,000 for the set, depending on where you are and whether you bundle them with one provider.

If the budget only stretches to two, get Working at Heights and Confined Space. They are the two that appear in almost every ad, and they are the two a recruiter notices missing.

What I would not buy yet

Forklift, dogging, rigging, HR licence, gas test atmospheres, and anything described as a "mining induction" sold by a private company. Not because they are useless. Some are gold later. But none of them get a green applicant past the first screen, and several of them are role-specific: a drill offsider ad wants an HR licence, a camp services ad does not care. Buy them when you know which door you are walking through, or better, when an employer is paying.

The exception is if you already know your target. If you are going for shutdown work and the ad says dogging is an advantage, then dogging moves up the list. The ad decides, not the training company.

Where tickets go on your CV

This is the bit that undoes all the money. Tickets listed on page two with no expiry dates are tickets a recruiter never sees. The thirty-second screen reads the top third of page one and nothing else. Put them there, with expiry dates, in the order the ad lists them. I go through exactly how in what a FIFO recruiter sees in thirty seconds.

The honest money question

If you cannot put A$2,000 together for tickets right now, do not borrow for them. Get the White Card and First Aid, apply to labour hire for general labouring and civil work, and let the first few pay packets buy the rest. Plenty of people have come in that way. The ones who borrowed for a A$5,000 bundle and then did not get a call are the ones I would rather you did not join.

The full ticket budget planner, with the per-ticket costs you can expect and a tick list by role type, is in the guide.

Read next: FIFO ticket packages: are they worth 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.