What a FIFO recruiter sees in your CV in thirty seconds (and what they never get to)

People picture a recruiter reading their CV. Sitting down with it, going through the work history, forming a view. That happens later, for the ones that make the shortlist. The first pass is different. It is thirty seconds, often less, on a screen with another sixty applications behind it, and it is looking for four things. If they are not in the top third of page one, the CV goes in the maybe pile, and the maybe pile is where applications go to die.

I have done that first pass for twenty years in HR across Australian mining and construction, on close to ten thousand CVs. Here is what it actually looks for, in order.

One: can you legally and physically do the job

Right to work, point of hire, roster availability. If the ad says FIFO ex Perth and your CV says Sunshine Coast with no mention of relocating, you are gone in five seconds, however good the rest is. If it says 2/1 and you have not said you can do it, same. These are not judgements about you. They are logistics, and a screener will not ring to ask.

Two: the tickets the ad listed

The screener has the ad open next to your CV. Working at Heights, Confined Space, EWP, White Card, First Aid, whatever the requirements line says. They are looking for those exact words. If your tickets are on page two under a heading called "Certifications and Professional Development", they may as well not exist. Put them in the top third, with expiry dates, and use the same words the ad does.

Three: have you been on a site before

Not "do you have experience". Have you been on a live construction or resources site, with a pre-start, a permit system, a supervisor, twelve-hour shifts. The screener is looking for the words that prove it: site, shutdown, civil, plant, pre-start, permit, roster. If you have eight years of civil labouring described as "general duties as required", none of those words appear and you have hidden the one thing that would have got you through. I see this every week and it is the single most fixable problem in FIFO applications.

Four: are you going to be a problem

This is the one nobody talks about. Short jobs with no explanation. Gaps with no explanation. A photo, which tells me you do not know the norms. A joke email address. Six pages. A CV that opens with a paragraph about being a motivated team player, which every CV says and so says nothing. None of these end you on their own. Together they put you in the maybe pile, and I have already told you what happens there.

What never gets read

Your personal statement. Your hobbies. Your referees' names (we will ask when we need them). Your 2011 job in detail. Your "key achievements" if they are not about site work. If it is below the fold on page one, it is for the shortlist read, not the screen. Write it for that, keep it short, and stop worrying about it.

The fix is a block, not a rewrite

You do not need a new CV. You need a screen block at the top of the one you have: name and the role you are going for, point of hire and availability and right to work, tickets with expiries in the ad's order, two lines of site experience in site words, and that is it. Everything the thirty-second scan is looking for, in the order it looks. The free FIFO CV template has it laid out. If you want the person who does the scan to do it on your actual CV, that is the review.

The rest of what gets a CV binned, in the order it happens, is in FIFO resume mistakes from the hiring side.

Read next: Free FIFO resume template and worked example

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