Jobs and recruitment researcher Hays recently flagged senior and mid-management roles as being in the highest demand among resource companies.

In particular, this included mining engineers, geologists, metallurgists and maintenance engineers with the scarce combination of technical know-how and leadership savvy.

The challenge for companies wishing to secure their long-term access to these highly skilled people lies in instilling talents in new recruits before they develop bad habits that can limit potential.

However, The Graduate Impact Company director Erica Jarvis said that the recent economic downturn was prompting resource companies to skimp on their graduate development efforts.

“The first things to go when the economy starts going pear-shaped are things like vacation student programs, internships and even graduate programs,” she told MiningNewsPremium.net.

“It’s a problem in the industry when funds are running low, the first things to go are these important development programs when, really, they shouldn’t be put on hold or canned.

“When the industry is booming, we’ve got all these skill shortages and people with lack of knowledge because in bad times the programs are begin shut down.”

Jarvis runs resource industry graduate development courses with the aim of fostering that elusive combination of tech prowess and softer, interpersonal leadership skills.

Her clients are often the big boys. The Graduate Impact website is festooned with feedback from happily settled BHP Billiton personnel.

But thinking long-term about quality staff is not just a luxury for the majors.

Smaller companies will be clamouring for uniquely skilled people as well, seeking to close what Jarvis calls “the action gap”

She said recent resource industry grads had a tendency to get trapped in a middle limbo between their classroom background and full professional competency. The theoretical is not applied in the practical context and a chance at early development of confidence and leadership skills is wasted.

“From the graduates I’ve spoken to, they said only a third of what they learned at university is what they actually use in the workplace,” she said.

“What that means, potentially, is that universities aren’t quite aligned with industry needs or requirements and are not allowing graduates to look at real-life situations.

“They get out to the workplace and they say, we should have learnt this at uni but we didn’t because we were too busy looking at the bigger issues and the theory of it all, not the practical application side of it.”

Jarvis’s workshops focus on identifying and developing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in graduates. The plan is to promote that critical synergy of technical ability and “people skills” miners need.

This is first approached through an interview process aimed at ascertaining the graduate’s level of “emotional intelligence”, program shorthand for self-awareness, demeanour, humility and maturity.

“We look at how emotional intelligence can affect how they do presentations, how they relate to people in the workplace, and we highlight that having a high level of emotional intelligence is actually really important in their careers,” she said.

“We can teach people with great attitudes, but you can’t teach people with bad attitudes although they may have some great ability and may be very, very clever.

“We’re trying to build great capability and leadership skills but we want them to be humble about it as well because that is a more endearing trait and value people look for in leaders – especially during these times that are a little bit tough.”