FIFO Jobs With No Experience

Can you get a FIFO or mining job in Australia with no experience?

The catch is what "no experience" covers. Nearly every no-experience ad on the boards wants a driver's licence, and the drilling ads want the truck one. They want a work history that shows twelve-hour days or heavy lifting or a workplace that ran on safety rules: construction, civil, farming, fishing, warehouses, a busy kitchen. "Keen to learn" on its own is the application that gets filtered out, because the recruiter has a pile of them.

How do you get an entry-level FIFO or mining job in Australia?

Step by step, with no experience

1. Get a manual car licence off red P-plates, a police clearance and a White Card, which WA lets you do online (what the ads ask for). Every course asks for your USI (Unique Student Identifier), a free number you make online.
2. Choose your door: the drill rig if you're fit and want the money fast, the camp, a trade assistant's job, or a trainee seat on the machines (the four doors).
3. Get the ticket your door asks for: a heavy rigid truck licence for the drill rigs, or a forklift licence for trade assistant work; camp utility needs no ticket to start (where to do them).
4. If you're interstate, move to Perth first, even into a rented room, because the WA ads want people living in WA (where they fly from).
5. Don't buy a résumé package or a course from a thirty-day video before you apply (the thirty-day videos).
6. Send applications to a few companies in one go, with the tickets at the top of your résumé, and follow each one up by phone (the résumé).
7. Once you're offered the job, the employer books the medical, a fitness test for drilling, the drug and alcohol test and the site induction.
8. On your first swing, expect a four o'clock bus, a twelve-hour day of doing as you're told, and a second week that's harder than the first (the first swing).

In Queensland

In Queensland, these doors open from Brisbane (the Queensland ads), and a coal mine also wants Standard 11, the coal mine induction, and a coal board medical, which the employer pays for.

Driller's offsider

The offsider is the drill crew's labourer: rods, samples, the rig's housekeeping, and whatever the driller points at. The drilling companies hire first-timers straight into it and train on the job, many through paid traineeships. Everything about it is heavy: the rods, the twelve-hour days, and the rigs, which sit among the most remote places on a remote site. Nearly every drilling ad asks for the truck licence or the willingness to get one, so it's the first thing to buy if this is your door.

Camp utility

The utility cleans the rooms, runs the dish pit, serves the mess and stocks the bar, for the contractor that runs the camp rather than the mine. The ads ask for hospitality or cleaning experience, and some add an RSA (Responsible Service of Alcohol) for the wet mess. It's among the lowest-paid jobs on site, and it puts you in the same mess as every crew. The utility page has the job in full.

Trade assistant

The TA, or trade assistant, is a tradesperson's second pair of hands on a shutdown or a maintenance crew: carrying, cleaning, holding, fetching. The shutdown contractors and the agencies hire them in bursts when a plant stops for its planned repairs, and a forklift ticket or working at heights gets you picked ahead of the queue. It's the door for someone who wants to end up with a trade, because a TA works beside several trades and can pick one.

Trainee operator and nipper

The mine owners rarely put first-timers straight on the trucks, but some run traineeships that do, and the regional contractors hire locals. Most of those traineeships want someone who already lives near the mine. On 12 October 2026, twelve of the fourteen mine operator traineeships on SEEK asked for a local address or a move to within an hour of the site, or said FIFO wasn't open to trainees.

Northern Star Resources was advertising an entry-level underground nipper in Kalgoorlie in October 2026, a residential job on a 7:7 roster (a week on, a week off). A nipper is the underground crew's runner, who brings the gear and supplies the drillers need. A Heavy Rigid licence helps with the truck traineeships, and a water cart or service truck is the usual first machine.

What the ads ask for

Most ads ask for:

• A manual C-class driver's licence
• A White Card
• A police clearance
• A Heavy Rigid (HR) truck licence, on the drilling and truck ads
• First aid certificate, on many
• An address in the state, and Australian work rights

After the offer, the employer arranges:

• A pre-employment medical, with a fitness test on the drilling jobs
• Drug and alcohol testing, with random tests after it
• The site induction

Nice to have, and what each one gets you:

• A forklift ticket: the trade assistant and stores jobs on shutdowns
• Working at heights and confined space: the maintenance crews
• An RSA: the camp jobs that include the bar

Nothing else needs buying until an ad names it. The tickets page has where to do each one, what it costs, and what never to pay for.

Where FIFO and mining jobs with no experience fly from: Perth, WA and Queensland (QLD)

The WA ads say "WA based" or "Perth based" in the requirements, and the drilling companies mean it: the medical, the fitness test and the gear fitting happen at short notice in Perth. An application from Melbourne or Sydney for an entry-level role is often set aside unread, so the honest first step for an interstate reader is an address near Perth Airport, even a room, before the applications. Queensland's entry-level ads are the same four jobs flying from Brisbane, and the Brisbane page has where they go; DDH1 Drilling was advertising Queensland offsider traineeships there in October 2026.

How much do FIFO jobs with no experience pay?

Each job's ad nearest the middle figure, or its bottom and top ad with fewer than five, from 31 job ads of 12 October 2026. Only ads that stated a figure are in the table. Most don't.

To see what any of those comes to after tax, over a swing or a year, put it into the FIFO pay calculator.

Read the offsider ads the way they're written. "$110K+ Year 1" in a title is the hourly rate times twelve-hour days times a 2:1 roster, not a salary, and it only arrives if you work every swing. One of them lays out a ladder to driller over five years, with a figure on each rung; the rungs are real, and each one is a ticket and a year of rods away.

What is a FIFO job with no experience like?

The first swing with no experience

Depending on which FIFO job with no experience you're doing, your day is rods, rooms or a tradesman's toolbox, but the shape of it is the same. It starts at four with the bus from the camp, the village of dongas, mess and gym beside the site. Then comes a pre-start meeting, twelve hours of being told what to do next in heat that doesn't let up, the bus back, the mess and bed.

Nobody expects a first-timer to be fast. They expect you to turn up, do what you're told, lift the way you were shown, and not make the day about you.

The part that isn't in the ad is the second week. The first week runs on adrenaline; the second is where the body finds out what twelve-hour days are, and the fatigue rules exist because tired people get hurt.

What is it really like starting FIFO with no experience?

The thirty-day videos

The videos promise a six-figure job inside a month with one ticket and no history, and most of them end with a link to a resume template or a course. The job they're describing is the offsider job, and the money is the offsider money, which is real and is earned a rod at a time. Nobody needs a template to apply for it. The ads are free to read, and the companies take the application straight from their own websites.

For the ones who stay, the other side is no rent and no food bill for two weeks in three, and a bank balance that moves for the first time. If a swing turns bad, Lifeline 13 11 14 is open all hours.

Where does a FIFO job with no experience lead?

The move happens on site, not on the boards. The supervisor who's watched you for two swings is the reference the next ad wants, and the crew that's seen you turn up is the one that mentions your name when a seat opens. Spend the days off on the next ticket, such as a truck licence or a forklift ticket, so that when the seat opens you already qualify for it.

Is a FIFO job with no experience right for you?

Two honest questions

1. Can you be near the bottom of the site for a year and not resent it? The first job is the price of the second. The ones who skip it are the ones still applying.
2. Can you fund the tickets, the licence and a month of waiting? The gap between ready and started is real. Budget for it, or the first swing's pay goes to the debt you ran up getting there.