“Do you have any questions?” - why we should all be vetting potential employers
This post is greater than 6 months old - links may be broken or out of date. Proceed with caution!
By Hanna Rennie, Conservation Officer/Countryside Ranger
I began my career in Countryside Management in 2018. In the 4 years since I have managed to gain experience in both voluntary and paid positions, and even managed to draw on a bit of life experience to really flesh out a CV I’m proud of. Between September and December 2021, I applied for 16 jobs and was offered 15 interviews - 9 of them I really wanted and thought I could get...but wasn’t successful; 5 of them I really didn’t want and hoped I didn’t get...and wasn’t successful; 1 of them I really wanted but didn’t think I would get…and was successful!
This is not a unique story and there will be many others who have gone through twice that number of applications and interviews before landing the job; some of you will still be searching.
But how many of us recognise the importance of ‘vetting’ potential employers? Do you consider it an important element of job seeking? In my early days of job hunting, I simply applied for any job that was advertised, regardless of work pattern, conditions, location, or pay - I was just happy for the opportunity of even an interview.
I very much fell into the habit of vetting employers by accident. After the 3rd or 4th unsuccessful interview, I began trying to actively stand out from other candidates. The feedback from failed interviews was consistent and came down to relatively minor differences: “The successful candidate had more familiarity with this particular site”; “They have done a couple more months of surveying experience than you”; There was no distinct lack of experience, no gaping hole in my CV that I could focus on filling. I was consistently a strong second. So in lieu of anything tangible that I could improve on (and, admittedly, increasing levels of frustration), I started asking more challenging questions, with hope that interviewers would look past the minor detail in favour of a strong personality, and eventually I would take the lead.
Vetting employers, certainly within Countryside and Environmental Management, isn’t simply picking those who are paying the most. Although salary can, and should, be an element of vetting (and many organisations continue to offer dismally low salaries for countryside professionals, as described here), it’s not necessarily down to who is offering top dollar and who isn’t.
Budget cuts have, and continue to, affect local authorities’ commitments to providing Ranger and Countryside Services. Between 2013/14 and 2019/20 there was a 6% cut in Government funding for councils. Additionally, many Ranger and Countryside Management Services are run by small conservation charities who are reliant on temporary funding streams and donations, and therefore offer below average salaries. Ranger Services aren’t the only industry impacted by this, Ecologists and other Environmental professionals are also affected by the decline of Countryside Services due to funding and budget cuts.
The pandemic has also had a significant effect on Services resulting in an increase in seasonal positions. A record of over a million people visited at least 1 National Nature Reserve in 2020, which has led to almost £1.5 million towards the creation of seasonal ranger posts across the whole of Scotland. Although recognition that our natural places need more boots on the ground is long overdue, seasonal contracts can be unstable and low paid. If you are looking for seasonal work, asking the right questions to ensure you get the most out of your experience is hugely important.
According to Indeed, the average annual Ranger salary in Scotland is £24329. Whilst I don’t advocate that we admit defeat and accept low salaries for roles that demand increasing responsibility, experience, and knowledge, jobs advertised below this rate of pay can still provide many benefits and be worthwhile.
Here are 10 tips based on my experience of how to best suss out whether an employer will commit to you, and more importantly, whether you should commit to them:
1. Get in touch!
Employers should list their contact details in the job description. Getting in touch before you have sent in an application can be a good way to determine whether you should bother with an application at all (and make an impression from the get-go!). Look for anything omitted from the job description that might be important to you. Many jobs don’t state the salary or the expected weekly hours in the advert – phone and ask. If it’s lower than average, some quick maths should tell you what the hourly rate breaks down to. You might be surprised that it's below minimum wage, which is not a living wage. Even in this economic climate, a living wage is a precarious income, so before you apply it’s important to know whether you can afford to.
2. If the salary is below average, analyse the job description. Will you be managing other staff members? Will you be required to carry out a lot of lone working? Will you be responsible for securing buildings and machinery? For me, these types of responsibilities should attract a higher wage.
3. If you feel confident enough to do so, ask why the salary is below average. It could be that the position is funded by a particular project. If it is fixed term, ask what the possibility of extension is and what this would be dependent on. For many positions, job security comes down to the individual themselves securing the continued funding.
4. Are you required to have a full suite of additional qualifications? Although it’s not as common as it used to be, many employers can provide training with this investment reflected in a lower salary. If there is no training budget, an employer can support continuous professional development in other ways - in one of my seasonal roles, my employer supported me in getting a chainsaw ticket by helping me apply for a training fund and using the uniform budget to cover the cost of my PPE.
5. If the job is in a rural location, is accommodation provided? I asked this question at interview for a fixed-term role in rural west Scotland, only to be told that no accommodation was provided and that the renting market in the area was non-existent. Sometimes I still lie awake at night and wonder what that successful candidate’s living conditions ended up being...
6. What is the work pattern? Weekend working is common in our industry, but if employers are asking you to work every weekend, how are they supporting a healthy work-life balance?
7. And speaking of a healthy work-life balance… Do you have a family? Young kids? Pets? A vibrant social life? More organisations are fortunately adopting Flexible Working policies, Pets at Work policies and other agreements that allow employees to fit their work into their lives, and not the other way round. Ask whether your potential employer adopts any of these policies and if not, why not?
8. Does the employer support membership of professional bodies? I’m a SCRA Council Member and it’s always important to me that my employers support this, especially as so much of the work can cross over and may need to be carried out during normal work hours.
9. Don’t ignore the gut instinct! Interviewers showing up late to a Teams interview without an apology or explanation; being actively interrupted when answering a question; interviewers who have clearly not read the CV/application form you spent hours curating - I appreciate that interviewing can be just as nerve-wracking and tiring for the interviewer as it is for the candidate, but if a potential employer can’t offer me basic respect and courtesy when I’m not an employee, I’m not convinced they will do so when I am…
10. And finally, don’t be afraid to challenge! Both employers and applicants alike should remember that job interviews are an equal exchange: whilst you are there to convince employers that your skills and experience make you the right candidate, they likewise need to convince you that they are the right employer. The stakes are always higher for the candidate – we will uproot our lives, move across the country and invest a significant period of our working lives in an organisation and that should not be taken lightly.
Further references:
https://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/publications/councils-face-complex-and-urgent-challenges
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17949859.countryside-crisis-fears-cuts-scotlands-ranger-service/
More from Hanna Rennie