If you type the words mining engineer into LinkedIn and limit the location to Australia the search shows around 5,700 people. Not that many when you consider the scale of the Australian mining industry. This is just enough people to fill 11% of Suncorp Stadium or only 6% of the MCG. It is little wonder that as the industry heats up we are all struggling to find resources from such a small pool of people. It does however, raise some interesting questions:
- With a relatively small number of people why is there not more collaboration?
- Why do we struggle to share information and potentially mitigate, making the same mistakes that others may have already solved through the school of hard knocks?
- Why isn’t there an easier way to leverage this network when searching for new talent?
- How many degrees of separation are there from all the other mining engineers in Australia and yourself?
This is why I have made it my mission to connect with every mining engineer in Australia because I believe we can do better in all these areas. By increasing the collaboration and sharing amongst our peers with more ongoing communication; sharing career advice; offering our time to mentor and coach the next generation of talent; communicating on the job learnings, and most importantly creating a community that encourages the next generation of students to consider mining engineering as a worthy pursuit.
Have a think about your connectivity to these 5,700 engineers, what is your first level connection %? How close are you to only one degree of separation from all our peers in the industry with your second level connection %? And what are you doing to share info you come across on a daily basis with this group?
Please share this article to help get all mining engineers connected and collaborating, our industry will benefit as a result.
Written by Simon Cohn