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sunshine through trees above a dry stonewall (Tim Hill / pixabay)

The situation with CJS and the Coronavirus outbreak.
 

As the situation continues to change we post notices on our social media. This page acts as a timeline of what we've done, are doing and holds notices of any changes. 


CJS is open and publishing as normal5 January 2021 Lockdown 3.0

Here we go again!

You can be reassured that CJS will continue to be here posting jobs, news and information though the new lockdown, however long it lasts. As the last one showed (see reports in today's CJS news headlines) nature and the countryside was much needed and highly valued by many. We're here to support everyone working in and for the British countryside, tell us what you want to see, what you'd like to read and we'll do our best to find it for you. And as before we'll try to incorporate as much good news and spirit lifters as we can, feel free to send and share your own.


We worked through the first lockdown and continue strive to provide the best service we can. Our office hours are slightly shorter and everyone is working from home so there is some disruption but please contact us by email with any questions or queries and submit adverts online as usual. We now have a phone diversion in place during office hours meaning you can call us as normal - apologies in advance for any background noise!

2 November: Lockdown 2.0

We're still here and carrying on as normal, any questions please contact us.

Changes and updates

Shorter office hours, 10am - 4pm

The CJS Team have worked from home throughout and have found the more flexible hours work well for all, allowing for school pick up and drop off, hospital appointments, family events and whatever crops up next; although we're now (October) working full time again we're keeping with the shorter official office hours, however, you may receive replies to email at other times. 

We reduced official office hours when times were quieter at the beginning of lockdown allowing staff time to cope with the 'new normal' of confinement, home schooling and allowing time away from the computer to decompress.


CJS overview

Whilst times were quiet we took the opportunity to assess how people actually used the CJS website, which sections are popular and which are rarely visited. As a result we're decreasing the Citizen Science coverage; having cancelled two editions of CJS Focus we're now giving them a new aim and making them more careers accented. We introduced our first facebook live session which was very well received and now we are lining up some more for the future.  We also managed to find time to get the majority of features and news items correctly tagged enabling us to launch (at last) the Browse by Organisation search functions. Witnessing an increase in the number of enquiries about changing career and moving to work in the countryside and with wildlife we thought it would be a good time to introduce a series of Job Profiles highlighting the nitty gritty of countryside and conservation work - warts and all! 


Bouncing back

Offers from CJS to help with recovery from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown. 

CJS Weekly

We offered readers the opportunity to pause their subscriptions whilst the job numbers were at rock bottom. Students graduation in 2020 ere (are) facing a very uncertain future and running until the end of the year we are giving the Class of 2020 a graduation gift a free subscription; we extended the offer to countryside staff losing their jobs prompted by the shocking announcement from the National Trust that they were making 1,500 staff redundant;  this offer is also running until at least the end of the year


     

Things that we did through the really bad times in lockdown

Putting a smile on your face

We made a decision to try to finish each day's news headlines with something positive, uplifting or funny. So you may see a few things that we wouldn't normally include like RZSS's lovely anteater baby at Edinburgh Zoo and Northumberland Wildlife Trust's 13 year old member, Fred who's literally climbing the walls of his house. We'll include links to cartoon, blogs, webcams and photos that we would probably tweet to followers but not everyone sees those. We'll include some (but probably not all) in CJS Weekly as well. If you've got a nice story to share make sure you send it to us (newsdesk@countryside-jobs.com) or tag us on facebook or twitter.

 

New web pages

We created a new Volunteering from Home section as it became obvious that regular volunteering was simply not possible. A similar situation was occurring in the training sector and we promoted the online training and webinar section.  As job adverts began to trickle back in many (if not all) had a working from home element, some as a temporary measure others as a more permanent feature and so it made sense to give these a separate classification too, see all working from home posts here.


Campaigns and funding addition

Under normal circumstances CJS doesn’t promote fundraising campaigns but these are not normal circumstances and we're aware that many of our wonderful charities are suffering a significant downturn in donations just as costs are going up. Therefore for this year only we will be happy to share across our social media any fundraising campaigns for registered charities. You can send details to our newsdesk on newsdesk@countryside-jobs.com or tag us @CountrysideNews on twitter or @CountrysideJobsService on Facebook and we'll share what we can - without bombarding our loyal readers with too many requests.

   

CJS Photography Competition

We suspended the competition in March reasoning that we didn't want you to be putting yourselves at risk taking photos. We relaunched the competition in June with revised subjects of From my Window and Hidden Gems for the final two months. The over all winners were announced in September - see them here.

 

In the meantime be well everyone and keep washing those hands.

   

Instead of a gloomy image of the virus we thought we'd brighten the page with a lovely sunny countryside scene from the Yorkshire Dales.

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