A year ago, Tianni Brown was looking for challenge. 

Living in Geraldton she had no idea what she wanted to do for a career. All she did know is she wanted to travel and try new things.

She already had a taste of the FIFO lifestyle, working as a housekeeper for half a year, Tianni said she was used to travel and the 12 hour days.

“I thoroughly enjoyed FIFO work and wanted to pursue something I could use to make a career out of,” Tianni said.

While browsing Facebook, Tianni saw an ad by BHP, promoting our inclusion and diversity goals and wanting 50:50 males to females by 2020 and upcoming trainee programs which caught her interest.

Tianni would go on to join three other trainees as part of our Processing Production team at Eastern Ridge.

She would go on to complete her traineeship in August 2018 achieving a Certificate II in Mineral Processing  as well as be nominated for the Central Regional TAFE Trainee award of the year, which she ended up winning and in doing so, became the first BHP trainee to win the award.

Looking back at her time as a trainee, Tianni said her biggest take away was increased self-confidence.

“I never would have thought I would be able to do the job I have now if it weren’t for a program like the traineeship,” Tianni said.

“All the crew have years of experience and are so multi-skilled. It made it very nerve wracking to begin a job with no prior experience.

“But that’s the beauty of the traineeship – it was all on the job training.

“We weren’t expected to know anything and were able to pick up skills from different operators as well as by our trainers.”

Now Tianni wants to share her experience and help get others involved.

“Get out of your comfort zone. Try something new. You never know where it will lead you or what you will end up doing,” Tianni said.

“I would never have imagined I would be operating machinery or calling the shots in the plant. It’s an awesome job and I’d love to encourage more people to get into it.”

Since winning the award, Tianni has turned her traineeship into a full time job and said she liked the satisfaction you get when you’ve worked a hard day.

“Whether it be in the ladder, in the plant, in the water cart or even in the bobcat,” Tianni said.

“The drive for production is strong and working in a team to achieve goals makes it all the more rewarding.”

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