Good Oak News

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Hiring Sustainable Landscapers and Ecological Restoration Managers

We're looking to hire a few good people here at Good Oak. We currently have our Sustainable Landscaping Manager and our Ecological Restoration Manager positions open, and I'm eager to accept applications from qualified candidates. We are also looking for a Seasonal Ecological Restoration/Sustainable Landscaping Technician.

The two manager jobs have a few things in common. They are both leadership rolls, with about 30% of the time spent in the office managing projects and 70% leading the crew in the field to get the job done. So candidates need to be good at managing time and juggling multiple projects at a time, all while leading by example during field work days. The benefit of this approach is that it allows the project manager to be sure the client's needs are met, and it also means they get to see the project through from vision to completion. We need people that are good with technology; iDevices, spreadsheets, etc. and good communicators who can clearly relay challenging conservation concepts to clients in an impactful way.

The positions differ in the kind of work they do.

For the Sustainable Landscape Manager, we're looking for someone with a horticultural background, particularly in residential and commercial landscaping. We want someone with the experience installing and maintaining trees, shrubs and perennials these sorts of landscapes. We work exclusively with native and edible plants because they have the greatest value to wildlife and humans. So we need someone with experience with these plants, or the ability to learn them. In particular we're hoping to find someone with a strong knowledge of edible plants since our current staff already knows quite a bit about landscaping with native plants. There also tends to be a lot of weed control in this work, and winters will be spent working hard outdoors with the brush clearing crew.

For the Ecological Restoration Manager we need someone with experience installing and maintaining prairies, clearing brush from woodlands and restoring them to health, stabilizing shorelines and controlling invasive weeds. Knowledge of safe and effective use of power tools, herbicides and prescribed fire is a must. Since brush clearing is such an important part of this work, they can expect to be doing this sort of work for the winter months each year, and we'd love to find someone with experience operating light machinery for those sites where brush mowing is the most cost effective option, or for other applications.

Over the past year and a half I've been having a hard time finding qualified candidates to fill these positions. So I'm now going to leave them open until filled rather than setting a deadline. We are willing to fill in some gaps with training for smart and motivated applicants who have most of the skills needed to handle these jobs, but these are leadership rolls, and we need people who can take on that leadership right away. Good Oak has grown a lot in the past 6 years that we've been in business, and frankly I need at least one, if not two people to take some of the project management responsibilities off of my shoulders (and to a lesser extent Athena Salzer, our recently promoted Project Manger's shoulders too).

We are also looking for a Seasonal Ecological Restoration/Sustainable Landscaping Technician, to start as soon as possible. This would be a good opportunity for more mid-level experienced people to apply.

If you're qualified and interested in these positions, feel free to send me a resume and brief cover letter (in the email itself is fine) at the email address on the job announcement. Because of my heavy workload right now, I will only respond to qualified candidates.

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