Project Exploration Geologist with 13 years exploration experience
Pros
-Amazing Dental/Health Benefits (likely the best out there) A common quote a Newmont "Newmont's medical/dental benefit package is plated in Gold". Surprising it's so good for a USA headquartered company. -Good Pay/Salary (on par with industry standards in Canada) -Excellent Internal (Mid Corporate-G3 Group) Exploration Team (highly experienced and friendly corporate exploration resource team - The Best!!) You'll learn lots, as long as you put in the efforts at your site and coordinate/communicate with this amazing Team, you will become an excellent Geologist with the latest innovations, technologies, concepts, etc.... -All the Software!! Fast learning experience with all the new tools (Every Software and more). Set up regular meetings with the Mid-Corporate G3 group to excel your skillsets as a Geochemist/Geophysicist. -Work Pace Just Right (moderate, busy at times) -Great Bonuses (slightly above par with industry. If you have a PGeo you will get a higher salary (3k-8k per year) and a higher bonus %) PGeo Bonus =15%, Non PGeo Bonus = 10% of annual salary. -Often has additional benefits e.g. $1000 per year for healthy lifestyle improvement items such as Gym equipment, outdoor active equipment (skis, skateboards, snow shoes, wetsuits, etc) -Safety (Top priority) Great reviews and investigations of all incidents and from other sites. This is one area where Newmont does take advantage of it's Large global portfolio and shares the learnings from moderate to major safety incidents. -Inclusion (meet experienced professionals from all over the world).
Cons
-Company is likely too big for the way it currently functions! (no cross pollination from other sites, Many hard lessons reoccurring at individual sites, costing 100's of millions of dollars). Company needs to focus on inter site -Numerous historic/legacy sites (hard to encourage adaptation at older sites). Lots of relatively inexpensive adaptations could prove major successes at older sites. However, like any legacy site in any company, hard to encourage positive change when a site has functioned a specific way for many decades. However, this really needs to be nipped and pushed if Newmont really wants to squeeze more $$$ out of their sites and reduced AISC/oz. -Site and Corporate Management (often missing critical success factors). Not taking advantage of the benefits of being a large global company. A general failure to learn from other sites on successes and failures to make a stronger and financially more stable company. Always re-inventing the wheel. This is a lose lose lose situation. You do not grow your teams skillsets, you miss out on potential discoveries and the burden of re-occurring costs can be exponential. Note** Mid Corporate management/scientific G3 group support were phenomenal!! This team will help excel your career, as long as you put in the effort with them. Can't say enough about them. -Human Resources - Skilled Technical Employee Retention - Numerous highly skilled Geologists were lost during the 2020-2022 post covid industry spike (Gold Prices and Capital expenditure volumes). While many fantastic employees still remain with Newmont, many were lost during this timeframe. Retain skilled workforce by creating a more flexible HR group, who can make discuss with employee's managers and make adequate/attractive changes to retain these employees. Countless employees left as Newmont was unable to negotiate or counter offer due to HR's inflexibility. Thus, creating a vacuum of lost expertise and the continuous cycle of consistent turn over and non stop training of new recruits. In the end a small counter offer would be an economic benefit to the Company: 1. Retain those technical skillsets within the company. 2. Reduce the burden of constant training on remaining technical employees. 3. Avoid loss in economic value of years of training, development and growth in technical employees. 4. Reduce competitor growth. Many of these technical employees left for other major mining companies and subsequently took all of Newmont's training, development, skillsets and also knowledge of internal technologies with them. -Work Life Balance (just the nature of the job, if you sign up for remote work, you will spend 60% of your year working and flying to and from remote sites. That is the trade off for higher salaries $$$. However, the more common 14 days on 14 days off schedule is the best imo for remote work) -Fly in Fly out monthly stipend for travel was often slightly below what was necessary for travel. The monthly allotment was determined by your distance from your home to the nearest airport to the mine location. Stipends maxed out at $1150 per month which is better than most companies but with increasing flights, fuel, parking, etc... it was easy to surpass this value but still great to have. Not a big "Con" here but should be slightly higher.