Three Skills You Wouldn’t Expect To Need For A Job In Mining

What do you picture when you imagine the employee of the month at a mining company? You might expect someone who’s an expert welder, or is super-handy whenever they’ve got a hard-hat on. But the mining industry is made up of a huge range of professionals and jobs - with equally unique people to get those jobs done. If you’re curious about whether you could find a place in this super-rewarding industry, take a look below to see if you have the right stuff for the job:
 

Skills with an Xbox controller

You’ve heard it here first - your skills playing Rocket League aren’t the waste of time your ‘rents make it out to be (although I’m sorry to say it’s still less important than getting your chores done). It turns out that many roles which use remote controls such as drones, as well as some trucks and heavy machinery use a modified version of an Xbox controller. That means that if you’re handy on the sticks, you might have the hand-eye coordination, precision and skillset to actually be a pretty awesome driver or pilot of some of Australia’s most cutting-edge tech. 

What’s also cool is that many of these remotely operated roles can actually be completed thousands of kilometres away. You might be operating a truck in the Pilbara while sitting thousands of kilometres away in a comfy office based in Perth. You could be hauling ore, breaking up rock or creating 3-D scans of massive projects to be used by engineers or environmental consultants.
 

Taking multitasking to the max

Honestly this one I can’t fully relate to - the limit for my brain is listening to music while I type, and if you try to give me anything more to do my brain starts leaking out of my ears. But if you’re a pro at keeping a few things on the boil at the same time, you could have an exciting career ahead of you in the resources sector. Automation has been a part of the mining and resources sector for a while, but improvements in areas such as environmental awareness and AI have taken things to the next level. 

As we mentioned, In the Pilbara, Rio Tinto runs all of its iron ore trucks using remote controls, and the company has recently set up a fully autonomous long-distance railway system that has travelled more than 7 million kilometres.

Not only are mining operations faster, more efficient and safer, but you can actually get to the point where you only need one operator to ‘drive’ several of these machines at the same time! 

There are workers in operation centres such as the Rio Tinto office in Perth which use big control rooms displaying the entire mining process in real-time. They then analyse the performance of the machines and make adjustments where needed to make sure everything’s running as smoothly as possible.
 

The gift of the gab

We’ve been talking about machines, robots and AI, but humans obviously still have a huge part to play in the mining and resources sector. Many of the skills you’d expect to see in other sectors such as leadership, communication and collaborative problem solving become all the more important when you’re working in high-pressure environments. Mines are massive, complex projects, which means you’re going to have several specialised teams on the job to get things done, and they all need to be in constant communication with each other.

Above ground, you could be tasked with communicating with the teams in the mines, relaying vital information such as changes in the local environment or emergency responses. Mines are often in incredibly remote locations, so large projects will typically have their own communications infrastructure in place to keep everybody talking.

Another role many people don’t know about is community liaison, where officers communicate with local communities, including First Nations communities, about ongoing projects. Mines can bring about a lot of change in communities, including in areas such as local investment in services, education and infrastructure, housing availability, employment opportunities and more. 

The point of all of this is to show that having an exciting, rewarding career in the resources sector is closer than you might think. Mining is a massive industry, and miners are looking for all kinds of different people with unique strengths and skills to pitch in. If you’re keen to find out where you could be a great fit, why not check out our Academy Resourcefulness, supported by AUSMESA. Every section you complete earns you points that you can redeem for real rewards - so make sure you take a look ASAP.