We are delighted to welcome Countryside Jobs Service on board as as LINK supporter. To introduce themselves, here’s a blog from CJS Editor Kerryn Humphreys…
CJS – what’s that then?
Crazy Jumping Snails? Complete Juniper Solutions? In reality nothing quite so exotic; CJS stands for Countryside Jobs Service, which as a happy reader once memorably said “does what it says on the tin” – remember that wood preservative advert?
Countryside Jobs Service is the original countryside specialist, publishing countryside, conservation and wildlife sector information: jobs, volunteers, news and training. CJS is an ethical business working in harmony with environmental professionals to conserve the British countryside and natural world. Motivated by conservation success not profits. Although primarily known for our job service, CJS is much more than a recruitment site, we also publish a wide range of environmental, ecology and nature related content.
From small beginnings
In July 1994 small envelopes started landing on the doormats of countryside rangers, inside were a couple of sheets of closely typed A4 containing details of vacancies in the countryside management sector. Today, CJS has three newsletters which are all digital, no more stuffing envelopes late into the night on a Saturday; and, like many places, the pandemic brought a change in working practices with the CJS Team working from home on flexible hours, but that hasn’t affected our level of service and we’re delighted that CJS continues to grow.
More than just jobs
As well as the original jobs provision there’s now a full information service as an integral part of CJS. We are publishing several features each week looking at things countryside careers and land management related, including promoting the Rambling Ranger podcast from SCRA. The range of features is very wide from looking at how volunteering can support and enhance the wellbeing and resilience in landscapes, communities and people by Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Countryside Trust to an in depth look at the work being done to save one of our most iconic native animals the Scottish Wildcat, from Saving Wildcats. Articles come from a variety of sources, from a single farm, Spring Farm Alpacas who wrote about the use of alpaca as novel conservation grazers, to the large: we had an exclusive interview with RSPB Chief Executive Officer Beccy Speight for International Women’s Day, charting her progress from childhood caterpillar collecting to heading up one of the largest UK conservation charities.
Nationwide Coverage
Although based in North Yorkshire CJS covers the whole of the UK, working with all the main agencies and charities and many of the smaller ones too. Since the first edition CJS has supported and been endorsed by the Scottish Countryside Rangers Association and is the official job service for SCRA (and CMA south of the border too). 17% of all adverts published online in 2023 were based in Scotland.
Reasons to be proud
CJS is run along Social Enterprise principals and we’re proud that nearly 30 years on from that first edition we hold true to the principles of putting back as much into conserving the countryside as possible. We still offer Standard Free Linage in CJS Weekly: it’s possible to advertise virtually anything (anything relevant to the countryside that is) free of charge with CJS. 89% of all the work completed in 2023 was done so completely free. Many people wrote lovely things about CJS for our Silver Anniversary in 2019 including this from Peter Gilbert, Volunteer Development Officer at Scottish Wildlife Trust: “Back in the mid 1990’s there weren’t many options for environmental job seekers other than looking at individual newspapers and contacting individual organisations. CJS made the process a whole lot easier by collating these jobs and putting them in one place. Organisations then realised that CJS was the best place to advertise their jobs because it was the publication for environmental job seekers. Although there are now many more competitors, CJS is the original countryside jobs service. “