Pity the poor consultant to the mining industry. If you are in the industry you know what I mean. If you are not in the industry, it does not matter what I mean. The question we seek to answer here is what does the consultants’ individual engineers get paid and are there jobs out there for them right now.
At this link is a list of the salaries for jobs for all levels of geo-science and geo-engineering professionals working for GeoSyntec. Now they do not consult much to the mining industry, but they are pretty specialized and you would hope their salaries are the same or higher than those folk who consult to the mining industry. I confess to a bit of amazement that these salaries are so readily available. But the site to which I link contains many more.
Another interesting site where people may anonymously post their salaries is glassdoor.com. Three people of the vast number who work for AMEC have posted their salaries. AMEC does a lot of work for the Canadian mining industry so here we get a sense of the salaries in the Canadian consulting industry. There is more on AMEC salaries at simplyhired. But the motherload is at SalaryList, where we learn the AMEC lawyers get the most: $135,000 per year. Principal engineers get about $100,000 per year. Shows you have to have a lawyer to keep those mining clients honest, at bay, or at least paying.
Next, let us ask if there are jobs out there in the mining industry. My source is CareerMine. By way of disclosure, I know the folk who run it and I like them. Certainly AMEC is looking. They are seeking everything from Commissioning Managers to Geotechnical Engineers, to Estimators, to Co-op Students. If the length of the list of folk they are seeking is any indication, there are jobs out there for you if you want to work as a consultant to the mining industry and are happy to work for AMEC.
I know SRK is always looking for the perfect fit. But they are pretty fussy, so do not run over right away.
As a personal observation, having scanned the CareerMine jobs postings, I get the impression there are not many consulting companies out there looking for folk. AMEC is the only one in North America. The situation in Perth, Australia does not appear to be much more vital. So much for those ill-informed, yet perpetually ebullient articles in the lesser mining magazines about a shortage of people to work the mining industry. In my opinion, those lesser mining magazine are perpetrating a myth that sustains the junior writers and fills the pages next to glossy adverts—but do not believe a word of them.
Being a former employee of one of the abovementioned companies, I only wish I left them years ago. I once bluffed and claimed I got a better job offer from a competing firm – and the boss fell for it hook, line, and stinker and I got a decent 20% raise. That’s probably why my boss would try to find a reason in a bid to justify yet another meager annual raise usually below the inflation rate and I knew it was time to get out.
unfortunately decent salaries haven’t always been on offer in the mining industry.
age old tradition has seen long hard work hours for average wages which wont help motivate the employee
thankfully, we are now seeing mining salaries increase well due to the global mining boom and lack of required talent.
I am not sure where the information on AMEC is coming from. I am a senior engineer at their office in Vancouver and can say many of us make more than that noted lawyer. Not sure who was responding to the survey quoted but suspect it is either by some junior staff thinking they should be called senior or perhaps from the disgruntled other companies who are not hiring.
Consulting engineering is a great profession and while the zillions of dollars some of the owner employees can obtain, we do fine for money. I don’t know if it is perfect but can say since joining AMEC after leaving the other company noted in the article above, I am happy with my salary and I am amused by the article that has grossly understated its amount.
Reply to Gerry Cheevers:
Thanks for your comment. I have often wondered at the salaries listed on the sites I link to in this blog posting. I too work for a Vancouver consulting engineering company and once worked for SRK and once for GeoSyntec. I agree the salaries listed on the sites seem to be lower than is paid to some of the folk I know. Maybe this is a good reason for the industry to act to counter the misinformation that maybe affects recruiting to the industry. And an even better reason to be careful not to believe all you see on the web.