How to get a FIFO job with no experience
Plenty of pages promise FIFO jobs with no experience. Fewer say which ones actually exist. Here is what employers genuinely hire for without a mining background, what they still expect, and how people get the first swing.
The roles that take people from outside mining
Camp work is the biggest door. The village operators hire cleaners, utilities, kitchen hands and dining room staff in numbers, and they take people from hospitality, cleaning, retail and aged care. The work is physical and the days are long, but nobody expects you to have seen a mine before.
Entry level underground miner programs are the second door, and the one people know least about. Olympic Dam in South Australia has advertised entry level underground miners with the training done on site, and the Goldfields contractors in Western Australia run similar intakes. You start as a nipper or service crew and learn the machines from there.
Trades assistants are the third. A TA works alongside a fitter, boilermaker or electrician, and on shutdowns contractors bring in dozens at a time. No trade is needed, and a TA who sticks around is often the one sponsored into an apprenticeship.
Driving is the fourth, if you already hold a heavy rigid licence. Service trucks, water carts and airport transfers all need drivers, and the licence is the qualification.
What no experience still requires
A manual driver's licence, because site vehicles are manual. A police clearance. A pre-employment medical with a drug and alcohol screen, and the fitness to get through twelve hour shifts. In Queensland coal, a Standard 11 induction and a coal board medical before you start. Employers will also want you available to fly out within a couple of weeks, because entry level intakes fill fast and start soon.
What helps but is not required
A white card, a working at heights ticket, a forklift licence and a first aid certificate all make you more useful on day one, and they are cheap next to what a swing pays. Steel cap boots of your own. A resume that puts your licence, your tickets and your last job in the first few lines, because the person screening it is reading two hundred of them.
What to be careful of
Anyone asking you to pay for a job, a guaranteed placement or a course you must buy before they will "put you forward". Direct employers do not charge to apply. Also be wary of ads that say no experience but then list a trade or a machine ticket in the requirements; those are for people who already have the ticket.
Where to look on this board
The no experience page lists only jobs where the employer has said in their own ad that no mining experience is needed. The entry level page, the utility page and the trades assistant page are the next places to check, and the employer list tells you who to apply to directly.