Labour hire or apply direct? How green FIFO applicants actually get their first swing

Here is a pattern I have watched for twenty years in HR across Australian mining and construction. Someone decides to get into FIFO. They go to the big operators' career pages, the names everyone knows, and they apply to every entry-level role listed. Fifty applications. Nothing. They conclude FIFO is impossible without experience. Meanwhile the labour hire firm up the road put three green starters on a civil job last Tuesday.

The operators are the last door that opens for a green applicant, not the first. Here is how the doors actually work.

Labour hire: the door that opens fastest

Labour hire and temp agencies exist to fill short-notice gaps on contractors' jobs. A contractor needs six trade assistants in Karratha by Monday; the agency needs six people with White Cards, Working at Heights and a clean medical who can fly Sunday. That is the whole screen. They are not looking for three years of site time. They are looking for someone who is ticketed, available and will not embarrass them.

The pay is a bit lower, the work is shorter, and you will not get the operator's camp. You will get the thing you cannot get any other way: your first site on your CV. Do it for one or two swings, keep applying everywhere else while you do, and watch what happens to your callback rate once the words "site experience" are true.

How to do it properly: register with several agencies, not one. Ring them after you register and ask what they are filling this month. Keep your phone on. Agencies ring the people who answer.

Contractors: the door that opens most

The companies that actually do the work on site, the civil contractors, the maintenance and shutdown contractors, the camp services operators, hire more people more often than the operators do. Their job ads are on their own websites and often on Seek under names you have not heard of. They take green people for trade assistant, utility and civil roles because that is where the volume is. Apply direct on their sites. Get on their shutdown registers if they have one. Follow up after a week, politely, by phone.

The operators: the door you earn

The big miners run traineeships and entry programs, and they are excellent. They are also competitive, intake-based and slow. Apply for them, absolutely, and keep applying. But do not make them your only application, because the intake might be in four months and you need to be working now. Get in through a contractor, then apply to the operator with a site on your CV. That is the order it works in for almost everyone.

Traineeships and apprenticeships: the door for the long game

If you have no trade and you are under about forty, this is the door I push hardest. Mature-age apprenticeships, dump truck operator traineeships, processing traineeships. They are a paid ticket into a career that will out-earn most office jobs for the rest of your life. I wrote about them in mature-age apprenticeships in mining. The screen for these is attitude and reliability more than tickets.

Which door is yours

No tickets, no site time: get the White Card and First Aid, then labour hire and civil contractors. Some tickets, no site time: labour hire and contractors, both at once, and the operators' traineeships in the background. A trade: contractors direct, the shutdown registers, and you will be fine. Already in and wanting a step up: the operators, now, with your site history at the top of the CV.

If you are not sure which of those is you, the free readiness check will tell you in two minutes, and the guide has the door-by-door plan with what to say when you ring.

Read next: FIFO jobs in Perth with no experience

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