Blackbird Environmental Ltd. Looking for Agrology Professional at Fort St. John, BC Full Time

Requirements (these are real, actual requirements*)

• Degree, diploma, or certificate in agrology, environmental sciences, fish & wildlife, or a similar field.
• Membership with the BC Institute of Agrologists (or confirmed eligibility to obtain membership if you’re not currently a member).
• At least one full field season of practical application post-graduation.

*Well, real-ish. If, for instance, you know you’re a great fit for this role but fall a little short of the experience requirement, we encourage you to go ahead and apply. We don’t need you to be the perfect candidate on paper. On a similar note, we know imposter syndromecan be a powerful force and may discourage fantastic people from applying. Please apply anyway. Many of us here have it too, so you’re in good company.

We have an overarching requirement when it comes to joining our team: our core values have to really click with you. There’s just three of them: prioritize people, build trust, and actively pursue personal and professional growth.

We try to live our core values every day, and we seriously mean it when we say we are an equal opportunity employer. We believe that a diversity of backgrounds, abilities, beliefs, and experiences is critical to our success, and we are passionate about creating a welcoming, supportive, and collaborative environment for all our co-workers. All are encouraged to apply as we continue to grow a smart and diverse team that loves working together to build something that matters.

We work hard to make working at Blackbird a great experience and have a team of truly exceptional people – the kind you’ll be excited to work with.

How you’ll work at Blackbird

Let’s talk a bit more about Blackbird as a company. Here’s how we operate:

Living in the BC Peace Region

We have just one office in Fort St. John, and we’d like you to live somewhere nearby for this particular position. Proximity often doesn’t influence productivity (and we have great remote work infrastructure), but this position requires some local fieldwork and a fair bit of hands-on learning from other professionals. We’re home every night, most of the time.

No Crazy Hours

We sometimes work over 40 hours a week, but it’s not super common. There have been a few occasions where things got a little crazy and people had to put some extra time in. But then they got paid for the overtime or took some extra time off, so it all balances out.

It seems that burnout during the summer field season is unfortunately a fairly common occurrence in the environmental consulting industry. We actively work to prevent burnout by being picky on the type of work that we choose to do, careful scheduling of work, and making lots of room for people’s time off during busy season. We work hard and smart but we’re in this for the long haul, no need to go crazy on the hours.

TAKE. YOUR. VACATION!

It’s important to get plenty of downtime to get out and do something that’s not work. We offer 6 % of your earned wages as paid time off for all our employees. Sounds complicated, but it essentially means a minimum of three weeks of paid vacation in a full-time position, plus you get more paid vacation time if you work overtime.

Prep for Retirement

We offer a group RRSP with a match to all our full-time employees. You can put up to 5 % of your pre-tax wages into it, and Blackbird matches your contributions. We’ve set the Group Retirement Savings Plan up with a range of low-cost investment options. Trust us, you’ll like it.

Up your Game

We’re serious about helping you improve your craft, and you’ll have an annual budget of $2,400 to spend however you like on professional development. Think conferences, online or in-person courses, subscriptions… it’s really up to you. We love to see our people growing. Oh, and Blackbird covers your annual membership dues for your professional memberships on top of that.

Your First Eight Weeks

We onboard slowly to really give you a chance to not only understand how we do things, but also why. During your first six to eight weeks, we’ll pepper you with training and feedback while you learn the ins and outs of your new role. You will have a mentor and there will be lots of internal and external training.

If this all sounds interesting to you, read on because now we want to talk about you. You will play a big part in helping us exceed our client’s expectations.

What Success Looks Like

You would join our operations team and work with a range of agrology and biology professionals in delivering effective, scientifically sound, considerate solutions to complex ecological problems.

You’re incredibly passionate about learning and about growing in your profession. You love to learn, and you are open to constructive criticism because it can help you get better at things you’re passionate about. You actively seek to understand others’ perspectives, and you enjoy sharing your unique knowledge and experience with others.

You’re pretty outdoorsy and love problem-solving. You’ll sometimes have the impossible task of seeing the forest and the trees (both figuratively and literally, we work in the most beautiful boreal forests).

You play nicely with others. You’re flexible and open-minded. Though you might be a perfectionist, you know when it’s time to click send. You are a master of being clear and friendly in the same sentence.

A Day in the Life…

You usually work Monday through Friday 8 am – 5 pm, with an hour-long lunch break. You might start earlier or later than that, e.g., if you’d like or need a bit of flexibility to make family life easier. We strongly encourage you to negotiate if an altered schedule, or altered hours, will better meet your needs.

We’re all generally working from our office in FSJ, though public health restrictions and life might have you working from home sometimes. We do have the occasional project that may require you to stay in a hotel or at a work camp, though those are rare.

You’ll check on some of the projects you’ve been working on, maybe download some GIS data or photos from the field iPad or one of our drone systems, make sure all the field data are properly saved and organized, then catch up on your emails for half an hour. We strongly encourage empty inboxes, and you might spend a bit of time deleting, delegating, deferring, or doing any action items that land in your inbox.

You might receive a new project request from a project manager, and you’ll set the project up on our task management system. There are typically a few to-do items to take care of next, and you might use our project checklist to work through a desktop review to prepare for a field study. While you’re at it, you might work with the project manager and field partner to schedule a field assessment and work on putting together a Fieldwork and Travel Safety Plan.

Some days you’ll be in the field where you’ll drive to the project location somewhere here in northeastern BC. Once there, you’ll work with a field partner to complete an assessment that may include measuring forage crop yields, taking drone pictures to document crop damage, assessing a proposed project footprint for environmentally sensitive features, digging and evaluating soil pits in a wetland, installing nest boxes or grazing exclusion cages, or any of hundreds of other tasks. Are you getting the sense that your work will be diverse?

Near the end of the day, you take a quick peek at the weekly team plan, scan your task list and calendar for tomorrow, close your laptop and move on with the rest of your day.

How to Apply

Please submit a PDF of your cover letter. This part is important, as we use it to filter out people who read this entire posting to the end and have enough attention to detail to submit a complete application. In your cover letter:

Introduce yourself and explain why this position is of interest to you, and why you think you might be a great fit. Please limit this section of the cover letter to one page and include the word “soil” somewhere.

On a separate page to your cover letter, answer the following questions (with each response being about a paragraph in length):

• What excites you most about this position?
• What are your favourite and least favourite parts of your current or most recent job?
• Tell us about a time you had to learn something new to excel at your job.

If you have a prepared resume, please attach it in PDF form. If you don’t have a resume because you aren’t even sure you’re looking to change jobs, that’s fine! An informal list of your work and education history are all we’re looking for at this point.

Job Types: Permanent, Full-time

Salary: $25.20-$35.28 per hour

Benefits:

• Extended health care
• Flexible schedule
• Paid time off
• RRSP match

Flexible Language Requirement:

• French not required

Schedule:

• Monday to Friday

Supplemental pay types:

• Overtime pay

Ability to commute/relocate:

• Fort St. John, BC: reliably commute or plan to relocate before starting work (required)

Experience:

• agrology or biology: 1 year (preferred)

Licence/Certification:

• membership or eligibility for membership with the BCIA (required)

Work Location: One location

Application deadline: 2023-01-20