FIFO Jobs With No Experience: How to Get Your First Roster

Published: 15 August 2026

The short answer: yes, you can get a FIFO job with no experience — but not as an operator or a trade. The roles that genuinely hire beginners are cleaning and camp services, kitchen hands, trade assistants, and utility or general hand positions. Get a White Card, a National Police Clearance and pass a pre-employment medical, and you can apply this week.

Which FIFO jobs actually hire with no experience

This is where most people go wrong. They apply for dump truck operator roles, get rejected, and conclude FIFO is closed to them. Operators are not entry level — most operators started somewhere else on site.

These are the roles that do hire beginners:

  • Camp services and housekeeping — $65,000-$85,000. Run by caterers like Sodexo, Compass and Civeo rather than the mining companies. The highest-volume entry point on any site.
  • Kitchen hand / utility — $65,000-$85,000. Same employers. No qualification needed.
  • Trade assistant (TA) — $95,000-$130,000. Assisting boilermakers, electricians and fitters. This is the best entry role because it exposes you to a trade.
  • General hand / labourer — $95,000-$130,000. White Card required.
  • Cleaner (industrial) — $70,000-$90,000.

Camp services is the unglamorous answer, but it is the one that works. Once you are on site with a work history and site inductions behind you, internal moves become realistic in a way that cold applications never are.

What you need before you apply

  1. White Card (Construction Induction) — one day, required for any construction or site work.
  2. National Police Clearance — allow a few weeks.
  3. Pre-employment medical — including drug and alcohol screening. Non-negotiable, and a common failure point.
  4. Standard 11 Mining Induction — not always mandatory before you apply, but it moves you up the pile.
  5. Driver's licence — strongly preferred everywhere.

That package costs a few hundred dollars and a couple of weeks. Candidates who arrive with it already done are dramatically easier to place, because the employer avoids the delay.

How the rosters work

Common WA rosters are 2/1 (two weeks on, one week off), 8/6, 14/7 and 4/3 for residential-adjacent sites. Flights depart from Perth to the Pilbara, Goldfields, Kimberley and Mid West. Accommodation, meals and flights are employer-funded, which is why FIFO take-home pay goes further than the headline figure suggests — your living costs during the swing are close to zero.

Who to apply to

Most beginners apply to BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue directly and hear nothing. Those companies mostly hire experienced people. The contractors and service providers are where entry-level hiring actually happens:

  • Catering and camp services — Sodexo, Compass Group, ISS, Civeo
  • Labour hire — Programmed, Workpac, Chandler Macleod
  • Maintenance contractors — Monadelphous, UGL, Civmec

The realistic timeline

From standing start to first swing, allow four to eight weeks: a week for your White Card and tickets, two to four weeks for the police clearance, then applications and a medical. People who treat it as a process rather than a lottery generally get there.

Where it leads

The reason FIFO is worth the effort is what comes next. A trade assistant who secures an apprenticeship qualifies into diesel fitting at $130,000-$165,000, or boilermaking at $125,000-$175,000. That progression is the actual prize, not the entry role.

Browse current FIFO jobs in Perth, Karratha and Port Hedland, or see what FIFO work pays across roles.

Recruiting for site roles? Post a job on Jobs In Perth from $29.