Newmont Mining Reviews

Pros

-Great pay and benefits.
-Opportunities for promotion and advancement within Newmont.
-Many projects and mines around the world to work at.

Cons

-Newmont is a little short-sighted when it comes to exploration and development so many projects with potential go untapped or are sold off.

Pros

Everyone is very nice. The company truly takes care of its employees and tries to keep a bridge between upper management.

Cons

The turnover in the company is very high

Advice to Senior Management

I think they do a great job

Pros

- Great pay, great benefits, great global & cultural exposure
- Great executive leadership that are truly trying to do the right thing
- A lot of really great people (intelligent, personable, etc)
- Great non-promotional career development opportunities if you are self-driven
- Ability to land a position insisting on more experience than you might have; as long as you are a quick learner, have great people skills, and are a good cultural fit into the team dynamic - they'll take a chance on you.

Cons

- Holy POLITICS batman! Too many high level Directors with little to no knowledge of the business they are in charge of - busy managing up and neglect actually being good managers.
- I haven't had a good boss yet. Every manager has been primarily self-interested and focused on promotion with absolutely no focus on the best interest of their employees career development.
- Terrible talent management. I've referred 5 of of the smartest people I know to open positions with no response from HR. Lots of missed opportunities; usually results in a high-level manager bringing in his/her buddies from a past company.
- Once again, POLITICS. It may be the nature of a company this size, but I have never seen more grown men in high-level positions act like such children.

Advice to Senior Management

The top is pointed in the right direction, and the bottom is executing on target - sort out the bad apples in Director roles and pay more attention to employee retention. Allow more internal growth opportunities instead of pulling all of your buddies in and neglecting the future of the company. 90% of the employees have been there less than 5 years - do you ever stop and wonder why?

Pros

Benefits are excellent. Time off and bonus has been good.

Cons

A dinosaur. Company remains overly conservative in business decisions.

Advice to Senior Management

Be an intelligent risk taking and quit wasting time in decision making.

Pros

This place has a Bass Akwards compensation structure. The less education you have, the more likely you are to be paid more. The less you know about mining, and the more blood ties you have with employees and contractors and vendors, the more likely you will be a manager. It's a job, but there are other companies that this place contracts work to that pay significantly better and know more about mining. Employees without college education, but who have a relative working here are at a great advantage.

Cons

At $1800 per ounce, you think this place would be making enough money to pay employees better, but apparently all of it goes into paying the contractors who are doing the same amount of work. At Newmont prepare to make 30%-60% less than if you're working with a company like SMD or Redpath (both of which pay over $100k). If you're not related to someone working in management, or one of the vendors, you'll never advance. Your best bet is to work for one of the contractors.

Newmont could probably pay better if they wouldn't have wasted so much money putting the managers, and parts 100+ ,miles away from the mine sites. If the managers thought they could manage a mine 100 miles away from the mine site, why not just run it from Denver? That way they could get rid of the wasted resources in the NARO-minded building.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay talented employees more, and get rid of the "here since high school" managers. Not one person in Nevada is actually a licensed professional in a recognized field, but there are sure a bunch of people sitting around in the NARO building who think the have miraculously worked their way into a "profession." Surveyors are not engineers, and until they finish a college program and pass the PE Exam, they never will be. The same holds true for the other wana-be "professionals" who claim to have "worked their way up." Stop wasting money on resources to fill the NARO building and the CAT warehouse and pay your employees working in the field more, or you'll lose them to SMD or other industries.

Pros

You will know more about the mine and how to make gold than the managers very quickly.

Job can be interesting and personally challenging.

Pay and benefits are good for someone out of school. Vacation time earned is better than most.

You can be incompetent and become a manager.

The contacts you make with contractors will land you a better job with another company.

Cons

Good old boys club. If you aren't a relative or best friend of a manager, you will never be respected or trusted.

Most of the management is vastly under-qualified for the job.

They waste millions on projects that a skilled person knows will not work while neglecting obvious low hanging fruit.

Politics.

Most managers are from a mining engineering or metallurgical background but show a surprising lack of understanding how to make gold.

Absolutely zero focus on proper planning. The targets are shifted faster than proper solutions can be implemented.

Our bonuses and raises are getting lower as the profits get bigger.

Advice to Senior Management

Wake up in Denver and get your house in order, then fix Nevada. There is so much potential here. I have seen a lot of talent leave to be replaced with incompetence. Have the technically competent people decide which project to pay for. Stop sending managers to make those major decisions that can't understand the basic, much less detailed aspects of a project. I am tired of it finally. I'm leaving too. Good luck.

Pros

Several High Profile projects
Company wanting tio implement significant change

Cons

Slow to react and implement change
Not willing to provide sufficient resources to complet the changes required.
Lack of suitabkle systems and processes
salaries not in the upper quartile of the inductry which are affecting the ability to attract and retain top performers.

Advice to Senior Management

Significant increases in resources are required to implement the lomg term vision. Failure to pay market leading salaries is affecting the ability to attract and retain top performers.

Pros

- 9-80 Work Schedule
- 4+ weeks vacation on year one
- inexpensive benefits
- 20%+ annual bonus potential (10% individual performance and 10% company performance)
- strong 401K
- great people
- lots of personal growth opportunities (lunch n learns, town hall meetings, online training, in-house training, tuition reimbursement, etc)

Cons

- long hours
- no maternity leave (need to use PTO or go unpaided)
- lots of gaps inbetween the ST and LT Disability benefits when you are in the first couple of years of employment

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to empower your employees as Newmont grows. Don't get away from the family feel from years ago, for most employees enjoyed that aspect of the company.

Pros

The pay is great, the benifits are wonderful an better than anywhere else.

Cons

Long hours, a little over an hour away from home.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate more to employees more.

Pros

There is a strong sense of family between the employees because most of us really got suckered into accepting our "not-as-promised" position. Unfortunately, the only other option is to work at Barrick (for less pay), which I hear is the same story, but less pay, but more competent and respectful managers. The pay is okay if you are a secretary, but it is salaried, so you do not get paid overtime for working 60-70 hours per week (The drive out to the mine is the worst because it too is unpaid), but you do get a small bonus I hear.

"Formal Business Attire" is nothing more than jeans and a "your favorite football team" windbreaker, and you can usually get away with chewing tobacco during meetings (the same leniency apparently goes for the guys too). However, if you are in a meeting just taking notes, the room is probably a wreck and filthy anyway, and you would look overdressed if you wore slacks or a nice blouse.

Cons

I thought the Business Administrator position was more along the lines of a managerial-type job when I was hired, but just a few months into the position I realize I am just a receptionist. Because this place over-titles the positions, I would be cautious of accepting a position, or salary, until you physically observe the person performing the job duties (not just the canned list of job expectations on the website). Many employees are not used to their potential, and I am treated like a clerk by the managers, and my supervisor...all of which seem to have made it into their positions based on who they were buddies with, and how long they have been buddies with them.

"Formal Business Attire" is nothing more than jeans and a "your favorite football team" windbreaker, and the same goes for the men. This is not what I expected from a Fortune 500 corporation, but the corporate office, and the shareholders apparently have lost touch on what goes on in Nevada.

Avoid this place like an MSHA investigation, and go work for one of the mining contractors instead if you want to make money and live in the middle of no-where. If you are looking for a a good paying secretary job, you have no ambition, and want to see your education go to waste, Newmont is the place for you. Unless you are in a clique, like another person suggested, put on a good face until the economy picks back up, then get out (as if you will have a choice).You will not make it into a decision-making position unless you have an MBA and work in Denver, or you have lived in Winnemucca your entire life and worked with Newmont for 15 years.

Advice to Senior Management

Clean house with the managers in Nevada, or require these people to act and dress like professionals and possess at least a college degree. Be honest and upfront with the positions you are advertising to people and stop giving people fancy titles and empty promises during the interview. A position as a secretary has nothing to do with the "business administration" of a company. A Business Administration position at Newmont is not an "opportunity" for someone if they are looking for an actual business-type position. Also, put a stop to the use of acronyms out here.