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HUMAN RESOURCES
Newmont vacation students
TOP EMPLOYERS VIE
for young minds
Irrespective of the cyclical nature of the resource industry, competing for the top new graduates remains serious business for employers aiming to secure their talent pipelines with the brightest young minds.
AT THE BEGINNING of each year it is not unusual to see up to 50 eager graduates file onto Glencore Mount Isa Mines’ bustling copper and zinc operations. While their crisp and clean high-vis uniforms are yet to show any signs of the work that awaits them, to Glencore these young minds are just as prized as the minerals they uncover. “There will always be roles for high calibre graduates regardless of whether the market is in an upturn or downturn because the key disciplines that we recruit for are very scarce in the Australian resources market,” says Jodie Hope, Glencore’s human resources lead in Australia. Glencore’s approach to graduate employment recently saw it voted one of the top mining sector employers in the Australian Association of Graduate Employers’ (AAGE) 2015 national survey
of graduates. “We build relationships with students when they first start university because we want to attract the best talent studying a core resource sector engineering discipline,” Hope says. “We provide a number of scholarships as well as opportunities for vacation work to undergraduates. Our graduate recruitment practices ensure these scholarship recipients are a core element of our selection process when it’s time for them to graduate.” Also topping AAGE’s list of mining employers is gold producer Newmont. Group executive of human resources, Michael Bisset, says the recognition not only reinforces the company’s graduate employee value proposition, but helps build the industry’s broader skills base. “Newmont constantly seeks to benchmark our key people activities
www.amma.org.au | WINTER 2015 | RESOURCEPEOPLE
to ensure they are fit for purpose and we have a very clear employee engagement model that is designed to increase the individual’s belonging to the organisation,” Bisset says. “By recruiting and developing high quality graduates we not only ensure a strong ‘supply’ for the future needs of the mining sector, but we also promote the long term viability of the sector by ensuring the future leaders have the capability to work at the appropriate complexity of sustainable industry practices.” Both employers’ programs involve a two-year rotation with opportunities for graduates to get a taste for different areas of the business. “Graduates can move across Glencore’s businesses, but we don’t mandate it,” explains Hope. “Their career development is very much their own responsibility as much as