Getting into FIFO

Fifty FIFO applications and no callbacks? Here are the ten real reasons, from the hiring side

It is almost never experience. It is one of these ten, and most of them are a ten-minute fix.

By The Hiring Desk · Senior HR Professional · October 2026

This is the question I see most in FIFO groups, and it is the one that makes people give up. Fifty applications, two months, nothing. They decide the industry is closed to them. After twenty years in HR across Australian mining and construction, most of it on the hiring side, I can tell you it is almost never "no experience". It is one of these ten, and I have put them in the order I would check.

1. You are applying to the wrong roles

The ad wants two years in a processing plant, an HR licence and fixed plant exposure. You have none of those. Your CV could be perfect and you would still hear nothing. Read the requirements line of the last ten ads you applied to. If you did not meet most of it, the problem is the target, not you. Change the door: labour hire and contractors, camp services, traineeships.

2. Your socials failed the check

Recruiters look. You will never be told this was the reason. Go through your public Facebook and Instagram as a stranger would and ask what a safety-obsessed employer sees. Details in this post.

3. The screen block is missing

Point of hire, availability, right to work, tickets with expiry dates, site experience in site words, all in the top third of page one. If a screener cannot find those four things in thirty seconds, you are in the maybe pile. Here is what the scan looks for.

4. You have no tickets, or the wrong ones

No White Card means you have not started. Buying a A$4,000 bundle the ads do not ask for means you have started in the wrong place. The order to buy them in.

5. Your experience is there but invisible

Eight years of civil described as "general duties". Two shutdowns buried in a workshop job on page four. The screener is scanning for site words and they are not on your page. This is the most common one I see and the most fixable.

6. You only applied to the operators

The famous names are the last door that opens for a green applicant, and their intakes are slow. If all fifty applications went to five big companies, you have made five applications, not fifty.

7. You did not answer the phone

Recruiters ring from unknown numbers, from site, at odd hours. If you screen calls and ring back two days later, the job has gone to someone who answered. Check your voicemail too.

8. You could not start

"Can you do a medical Thursday and fly Sunday?" If the honest answer was no, because of notice, the dog, the car, the police clearance you have not got yet, the next person said yes. Sort the logistics before you apply, not after the call.

9. Something in the history worried them

Three jobs in eighteen months with no explanation. A two-year gap with no word. A role that clearly ended badly, described in a way that makes that obvious. None of these are fatal. All of them need one honest line, because a screener who has to guess will guess wrong.

10. You would not pass the screen tomorrow

I put this last because people do not want to hear it, but if you are not certain you would pass a drug and alcohol screen this week, nothing above matters and the applications are wasted. Sort it first. What the process involves.

How to find out which one is yours

If you have been tracking your applications, the pattern tells you. Applications and no phone screens means one to six. Phone screens and no interviews means seven to nine. If you have not been tracking, start today, and in the meantime the free readiness check will flag most of these in two minutes. If you want the person who would be screening your CV to tell you exactly which it is, with the fixes written down, that is the Hiring-Side CV Review.

Read next: Free FIFO resume template and worked example · FIFO interview questions

The FIFO Interview Pack coverThe FIFO Interview Pack · A$29Got the call? The phone screen, the knock-out questions, and the trade competency questions recruiters read off a list for 14 roles, with what they are listening for.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.