So, I’m looking through the Federal job vacancies, and there is page after page after page of jobs available in the US Forest Service. Granted, they are nationwide, so maybe there’s only one or two per locality but there’s a ton!
Why so many openings at the USFS?
Not too many people want to work in the forest, is my bet. It gets lonely out there. And the trees. The trees can hear your thoughts.
I applied for a job as an accounting manager at the Grand Canyon park. It was a horrible job. First only $9.00/hr but your salary. I would’ve had a staff of two to manage. You would have to live in bunkbed communal housing with 3 others (4 to a cabin), no benefits as it was only a 90 day job. All sorts of background checks.
I couldn’t take the job as if I moved out of my flat in Chicago, in 90 days I’d have to move back and wouldn’t have a job
Most of the federal departments only post a job and accept applications when the job is available, but the Forest Service keeps positions open for applications all the time, and then just fills them by going down the list.
I would bet that most of these Forest Service jobs are temporary summer help or other seasonal type and that very few are full time in anyway that might develop into a career.
No, the ones I saw were all FT in the professional pay range.
Ah, that would make sense. Do they have a lot of turnover? Is that why they are always accepting applications?
Did you apply for a federal government job at Grand Canyon National Park (I think not), or a private concessionaire position? As federal employee, the lowest paid base rate supervisory position is a GS7. That pay rate is $33,979 base, or $16.33 an hour.
Too early to announce 2011 summer temp help. That starts in late November/early December. Many positions I scanned are permanent, full-time career positions with very good salaries. Perhaps the KSAs required are a bit tough for many people.
The latest Best Places to Work in the Federal Government annual report just came out. Out of 224 federal agencies listed, the US Forest Service ranks #203 out of #224. That’s better than last year when they were rated at #206. The problems? According to the report it’s the poor leadership of the agency. Apparently, the top brass in Washington, DC, just can’t lead and their strategic management just plain sucks.
To be fair, the Bush administration targeted the Forest Service to quietly eliminate it as a federal agency, despite federal law to the contrary. With a complicit top management, morale plummeted. When the Obama administration came to power, rumor has it they fired the then Forest Service chief just as soon as legally possible. Morale is very slowly climbing. However, there are apparently several Bush appointees who converted to civil service in the waning days of the previous administration who continue the agency’s destruction. A number of federal agencies have Bush Deep Throats doing similar things elsewhere.
Also, many federal agencies are hamstrung by archaic federal government hiring practices and internal HR incompetence. It can take up to a year to fill a federal job, even one vacated by a previous employee. And let’s not forget that that many Forest Service jobs are in rural areas with limited amenities. Unless you thrive in Small Town America, many people just don’t want to give up their cushy and lazy living conditions in the city.
That’s too bad. Looks like those would be very good jobs (at least salary-wise) especially in a small town.
Yes, I think jobs like those would suit a lot of people – just not those who like all the amenities of the big city (such as me!). One drawback might be that your husband or wife might find it hard to get a job in a small town.
Yeah, but I’m assuming these would be good jobs for someone already in a small town, not moving there to take the job.
Bears.
You win.
I’m not sure just the recent problems in managment or the ruralness (or the bears) is really the simplest explaination. The USFS is just a big agency that does a lot of labor-intensive work and hires a lot of people. It also has a lot of different job titles. So for example maybe the IRS has one job listing “accountant, Washington D.C.” but hundreds of openings. The forest service has hundreds of odd occupations (ex: fish biologist, aircraft dispatcher, horticulturist, plant pathologist) which are located all over the place. So lots of job listings.
I dont know how relevant this is, but 25 years ago I applied for a job at a government agency (soils conservation service).
no email, no computers, etc…just a classified ad in the newspaper. I walked in, filled out an application
I was unemployed, inexperienced, and desperately wanted the job, so when I saw the secretary* yawn and toss my application onto a HUGE stack of papers, I tried to pry some info out of her. I asked , timidly, what my chances might be of actually getting hired.
She told me bluntly" “no, we don’t have any openings, and have no intentions of hiring anybody.We just placed the ad in the newspaper because the procedures say we need to keep applications on file for every position in our organization.”
And that was back when advertising in the classifieds of the newspaper cost money…so now that it is free online, it is even easier to waste time…maybe the OP is seeing a lot of job descriptions, but no real intentions of providing any jobs.
*(no “administrative assistants” back then!)
I would suggest reading the complete job details for a listed position to locate the contact number. Then call it up and ask. I’m betting the listing you pick (at random) will be legit.
All the jobs where the Location is “throughout the nation” are a bunch of crap, yeah they can be used to fill lists and probably to fulfill some bureaucratic rule but I for one have never heard of anyone getting hired off them. You want to look for jobs with an actual location, which means for the most part there is an actual opening that needs to be filled.
The Forest Service has a LOT of seasonal jobs. I used to work a seasonal firefighting job for the Forest Service. In one place, there were 14 people in fire and 3 of them were permanent full time, everybody else was seasonal. About this time of year, a lot of the seasonal employees have either left or ran out of hours. That may account for some of the positions you see, as well.
Open continuous announcements often mean they are entry level positions where you submit an application, your app is rated and it enters a list. As positions in the agency become vacant, they go to the list to select someone to refill the position. They are not “crap” but an efficient and effective method for an agency to fill a position quickly from a list of qualified applicants at minimum cost (think your tax dollars) and time (for the agency). However, there are other open continuous announcement for some highly specialized jobs that are always difficult to fill. With those announcements, if you rate as well qualified you are almost guaranteed you will be selected in a period of weeks to months.
The downside with open announcements is the willingness (or lack thereof) to move to a new job without hesitation. In a nation-wide announcement if limit your location choice, you greatly limit the opportunities you will be selected for a position, regardless of your qualifications. On the other hand, the more you increase willingness to take a job anywhere, your potential for getting an offer goes up.
In this economy, even federal jobs (and there are plenty available) are difficult to get. It’s a buyer’s market for the feds and many positions have strict requirements. If you meet those requirements, good for you.
Look at the list of jobs suggested for people with INTP personality types. One of them always seemed way out of place to me. Of course INTJs wouldn’t have that job on their list. They can’t see the forest for the trees.
Actor
Agent
Archaeologist
Architect
Artist
Computer Animator
Computer Programmer
Computer Specialist
Consultant
Economist
Engineer
Financial Planner
Forestry/Park Ranger
Historian
Human Resources Manager
Interpreter/Translator
Inventor
Investigator
Investment Banker
Judge
Lawyer/Attorney
Legal Mediator
Logician
Marketer
Mathematician
Musician
Network Specialist
Philosopher
Photographer
Project Manager
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
Researcher
Scientist
Strategic Planner
Systems Analyst
Teacher/Professor
Technical Writer