PHM recruits the technical and operational talent that moves rock and makes metal — mine engineering and planning, geology, mineral processing and metallurgy, maintenance and reliability, environment and tailings, and the site leadership that ties it together. Specialist, exclusive search on a fee-on-hire basis.
Since June 2025 Ottawa can designate a project as being in the national interest, which means the federal authorisations it needs are treated as granted rather than fought for one at a time. Of the eighteen projects referred so far, a clear majority are mines, metals and northern access. Projects that assumed years of permitting now need people on site sooner than their schedules were built for, and most of them are remote — so willingness to relocate or rotate has become as scarce as the technical skill itself.
A vacant plant or operations seat is measured in throughput. Every week it is open has a tonnage figure attached, and it is rarely recovered later.
Our mining recruiters place operations and technical talent — including people who will only consider a move for the right camp rotation, region and project stage, which is a conversation that has to happen early.
Mining is a lifecycle business, and the talent question changes at every stage of it — exploration, study, build, ramp-up, steady-state, and closure. A sample of the work and the projects we recruit for:
Recruiting for the processing plant rather than the mine? Fixed plant and process work overlaps with our advanced manufacturing team.
Levels from engineers, geologists, and metallurgists through superintendents and mill managers to general managers and technical services leadership — underground and open pit, operating mines and development projects.
Retained-level rigour, on an exclusive basis, for a fee paid on the hire — no upfront retainer and the delivery risk on us. We also work standard contingency where a role suits it. How we engage →
Because we don’t run volume, an exclusive mining mandate gets our full bandwidth — which matters in a sector where the qualified population for a given commodity and process route is small and largely already employed.
Mine engineering and planning, geology, geotechnical, and ventilation — underground and open pit, in operations and in study work.
Mineral processing, metallurgy, and mill operations — the flowsheet from crusher to concentrate, and the recovery that pays for it.
Maintenance and reliability, health and safety, environment and tailings, and the superintendents and general managers accountable for the site.
Mine engineering and planning, geology and geotechnical, mineral processing and metallurgy, mill operations, maintenance and reliability, environment, tailings and permitting, and health and safety — from technical specialists through superintendents to general managers, in Canada and the USA.
Yes — and they are genuinely different searches. A mill metallurgist and a mine planner share an employer and very little else. We treat processing and metallurgy as its own discipline with its own candidate population, rather than folding it into a generic mining search.
It is a growing practice for us, newer than our engineering and construction desks, and we would rather say so. The method is the same: direct search, sector-fluent screening, real compensation insight. The honest way to judge us is a conversation about the specific role.
Exclusive contingency. Nothing is invoiced until someone is hired, which puts the delivery risk on us rather than on the company that already has the problem.
Yes. Rotational, fly-in fly-out, and remote-site roles are normal in this sector, and they change who will realistically move. We screen for rotation tolerance and family circumstance early, because that is what determines whether an otherwise perfect candidate accepts.
Yes. We provide real-time compensation insight for the specific role, commodity, region, and seniority you’re hiring for — including the rotation and site premiums that make mining offers hard to benchmark from public data.
An advisory conversation about the mining hire ahead of you — and where the right person is likely to come from. Not a commitment.