Owning and leading a business for over 14 years has taught me a thing or two about interviews and has certainly sharpened my intuition for picking the best candidates. During the 14 years we have hired over 150 people, interviewed around 1,000 people face to face and screened at least 5,000 candidates. So what has been so special about the 3% of people that have applied to us that we actually employed?
In today’s more volatile, complex and unpredictable business environment, it is more important than ever that we are equipped with the knowledge and tools to be able to adapt and transform business operations to become more effective and profitable.
Choosing a job where you’ll be working overseas is a major decision for most people. There are plenty of opportunities for expat work in the mining industry, so should you board that plane if you’re offered offshore work?
We’ve listed the top four benefits of expat work to help you decide.
Hi, my name is Simon and I am a recovering engineer. It has been 8 years since my last design and I am proud to say I haven’t fallen off the wagon, yet. Having graduated from engineering 22 years ago I spent a good portion of my career in the ‘doing’ roles of operational engineering and absolutely loved it.
Written by Alessandro Dotta - Underground Metals Lead and Principal Mining Engineer at MEC
So, your operation is well-staffed with qualified, trained employees. Your people are pretty committed to a particular project, and everyone seems to be pulling in the same direction. Yet, despite this, you’re not making the advances you’d like to see; there’s progress but the rate is frustratingly slow or the results minimal. You may have considered engaging the services of a technical consultant then dismissed the idea because, well, your team already has plenty of expertise.
When it comes to mining, the mindset has often been to move larger volumes of material as quickly as possible to reduce process unit rate. While material movement is obviously very important, it can drive the wrong behaviours if the wrong material is being moved to prioritise volume movement over production requirement. This is likely to destroy value for an operation by lowering overall production yield – the number one value driver.
The last mining downturn left us with a shortage of mining engineers, and the effects of this are far-reaching. Not only does the industry need to continue to focus on encouraging young people back, but graduate engineers who are at the beginning of their careers are facing a different trajectory of learning while they’re on the job.
COVID-19 has profoundly affected the lives of many worldwide and has resulted in many organisations implementing shifts to ensure business continuity. Whilst we endure through these challenging times, it is vital to ensure your team are continuing to connect.
Today’s challenging business environment means everyone is short-staffed and under the pump. Pushed to their limits, it’s very hard for business owners to be innovative and challenge the status quo, when they’re constantly “fire-fighting”.
