How to get a FIFO job with no experience: the six real doors in

"You need experience to get experience" is the line everyone hears, and it is half true. The half nobody explains is that entry-level FIFO is a different door to the one most people are knocking on. After twenty years in HR across Australian mining and construction, and a FIFO household of my own, here are the six doors that actually work.

1. The roles that need attitude more than qualifications

Trade assistant, camp services, kitchen hand, cleaner, stores, and security (a short Cert II course gets you in). These are not glamorous, and they are how a great many people started. They need a clean medical, the basic tickets, and someone who will turn up and be easy to have around. Entry-level roles typically sit around A$65,000 to A$130,000 depending on the role and roster, with camp and meals included.

2. The contractors, not just the operators

The big operator career pages get thousands of applications for every entry role. The contractors who run their camps, their shutdowns, their maintenance and their civil work get far fewer, and hire far more entry-level people. Build a list of the contractors and camp services companies working in your target region and apply to them directly. This one change doubles most people's callback rate.

3. Labour hire and temp agencies

If you have a qualification or a ticket but no site experience and no callbacks, this is the fix. Register with two or three agencies that supply the resources sector. Take short assignments, industrial, civil, shutdown work, for a month or two, and keep applying for permanent roles the whole time. Recent site work on your CV changes how the screen reads you.

4. Apprenticeships and traineeships

This is the door people walk straight past. The big operators and contractors run mature-age apprenticeships with no upper age limit, dump truck and plant operator traineeships that take people with zero experience, and women-in-resources and other diversity intakes every year. They pay less to start and they are a paid ticket into a career that will out-earn most office jobs.

5. Move to where the work is

If nothing is holding you, go regional. Kalgoorlie, Karratha, Port Hedland, Newman, Mount Isa, Emerald. Start behind the pub, drive a delivery ute, work the servo, whatever pays the rent, and be in the room where the site jobs get talked about. A great deal of entry-level FIFO happens because someone knows someone and a name gets passed along. The person who is already in town and already known gets the call.

6. If you have a trade, or want one

Electricians, fitters, boilermakers, diesel mechanics: you are the most sought-after people in the industry. Your problems are the state licence (trade licences do not transfer between states), the specialist tickets your trade uses, and a CV that shows the heavy-industry side of your work. And if you do not have a trade, the long-term move is to get one. That is the difference between a few good years and a career.

Then the part that decides whether you stay

Getting the job is the easy half. Whether you get a second swing is decided in your first one, usually by things that never make it into a performance review. That is the subject of why new starters don't get asked back, and it is the half of the guide people say they wish they had read before they flew.

Read next: FIFO jobs in Perth with no experience · Mining jobs in Queensland with no experience

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