How do I find a job outdoors?

Any good with heights? How about becoming a lineman?

I mean in an electrical scenes, not a sporting one. Although that's also outdoorsy.

Or a painter. Exterior work all summer if you live in a city.

No experience and no qualifications? Depends what you want to do? For arguments sake countryside management (as that's what I want to do) you'll need to start volunteering to gain experience and work on qualifications (degree in Env Sci or Countryside management) also look at getting your NPTC tickets for chainsaw, brushcutting, spraying etc etc, do online courses in monitoring and QGIS etc

Other option is apprenticeships, working on power lines mentioned above, look at the likes of Western Power and their apprenticeship schemes

How about becoming a lineman?

For the county?

You could do something like work for a ground investigation company, drilling boreholes. If you get on a window sample drilling rig you could have a job outdoors that's interesting without having to get any new qualifications. Where are you based?

Working outdoors is quite a broad topic, but I do get where you are coming from if work is 100% desk based at the moment.

So, any other must-haves, like you want to work in recreation / with people, or land-based conservation work? Mostly on site rain or shine, or just the opportunity to go outside now and then? Crucially, do you need to earn x% of current salary, or above minimum wage?

Outdoor work sounds lovely but the reality is often very different. You work long hours in the summer to make up for the short days in winter, spend 6 months of the year working in cold rain frost, and howling winds and often muddy wet conditions.

Have you considered doing other jobs in IT? Field engineering gets you out and about for instance.

Work remotely doing tech for an outdoor brand....

...in a shed in the middle of nowhere with a Starlink subscription.

So I went on a course for burnt out tech execs a while back to connect with manual work. The course leader tells me all the people he is getting from all the usual tech co’s asking how to move out of tech and get outdoors or work with their hands. As we part ways at the end of 2 days he asks me is how to get into tech as he is fed up with hard manual labour 😂😂

If youre happy to put your waterproofs on at the beginning of october and leave them on till april, then best of luck in your chosen career. Gardening seems to be the furloughed workers favourite around here judging by FB.

Years ago a mate of mine quit his IT sales job, he was good at it, but hated it. Made stacks of money but it wore him out. He got a job working outdoors for the council, basically on his own all day long, in the sun messing about with mowers and hedge trimmers and that sort of machinery.

He loved it. Got fit, got a tan and had no crap from numpties in suits and ties.

Then winter came, it got cold, muddy, rained all day and got dark at 3pm. He lasted about a week of that.

Yep, I realise I might hate it, but right now I don't have a career I'm invested in, I'm not earning loads of money and I want a change. If it's not for me I haven't lost anything by trying.

I'm in Kent which probably limits what's available but will be looking at anywhere in the country once my lease is up.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, at least it gives me some ideas to look into.

Would you be able to afford a pay drop while you start a new career?
My brother has an amazing job, he works for a Special Needs education company, he does all of the outdoor activities. He worked for free for over a year, he’s a qualified mountain bike instructor and mountain leader. He still has to spend a fair bit of time in the office, risk assessments and planning.
He was in the army for 25 years so already had the qualifications.
It’s a very rewarding job, pay isn’t great but he’s more than happy.

Have a look on indeed as gardening firms are looking for seasonal  staff around now which means you could try it for a number of months to see if it’s for you.

He loved it. Got fit, got a tan and had no crap from numpties in suits and ties.

Then winter came, it got cold, muddy, rained all day and got dark at 3pm. He lasted about a week of that.

Sounds a bit like people who start commuting on a bike during summer but can't hack the cold and rain in winter. 😀 Winter really sorts the casual cyclists out from the hardcore.

On a more serious note, I would personally stay away from work that involved manual labour. As you get older and pick up injuries this sort of work can't become really hard.

Dont become a gardener.. its knackering.
You end up too tired for 6 months of the year and pissed off its raining or cold for the other 6 months. Unless you like being tired or mud... then carry on

as above its not as good as it sounds, in the UK at least. I do some quite interesting work (well it sounds that way) outside but today was the first day since October where I've actually enjoyed the conditions. Spent most of the winter frozen, getting in and out of layers, often wet, hand and foot warmers, wind burn on my face. I'll enjoy the next 6 months but not sure I have another winter in me, dreaming again of a warm canteen, coffee on tap and being nice and warm

Gardening franchises are available.
While I was on my redundancy year I did a couple of outdoor jobs -
Dog walking - I thought I'd like it, but it was awful. It probably could be ok, if you get to choose the dogs and where you take them, but I didn't.
Farm work - I actually found this more my thing. Nice variety of work, physical, without destroying the old body (which I imagine gardening would do)...
There's also outdoor stuff like fence installing, window fitter.. all mostly outdoors , but quite weather dependent.

Or a linesman. I've a mate who's a linesman, he works away a lot. Stops in caravans and b&b's (pre covid.) Very hard graft and the dark and cold winters are his busiest times.

I’m in Kent which probably limits what’s available but will be looking at anywhere in the country once my lease is up.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, at least it gives me some ideas to look into.

Look at NT, NE, EA, council, water companies, power, gas, highways England, network rail, etc

I used to be operational and the mix of office and outdoors was great

I,ve often thought a postie is a good job.

Get your IRATA level 1, your PTS and get cracking on the railways doing some geotechnical work. There are companies all over willing to take you on and break you, mentally and physically. The money is half decent but the hours long. I was on 6x12 hour night shifts a week for quite a while.

I graduated in countryside management, then found jobs were few and far between. Became a tree surgeon for almost a decade then got my rope ticket and have been all over. I'm now a structures examiner on the railway. I like being outside but winters suck.

A job in construction maybe? Brickies are in demand, obviously you'll need to earn some qualifications but you may be able to get an apprenticeship depending on age.

Environment Agency as a River Operative in FCERM. We take people on with no experience and all training is given. Depending on the area where you work you could get trained in chainsaw, boats, excavators, and a host of other skills. Though must be prepared to work in all weather (we have a tendency to be busy when it rains), do an incident response role, and shift work in incidents if required.

And once you're in you have the opportunity to move on.

Lock keeper. A lot of competition, I am sure. But I think this would work be for me. As for railways - we've had them working behind our house on 12h shifts. Looks like hard work but a lot of camaraderie.

Archaeology? My wife is a bit further up the chain and spends a fair bit of time in the office/WFH now writing reports. But when she started out in all weather's all year round.
She studied it at uni, but commercial archaeological units take on untrained folks/labourers.

Gardening is the easiest to start. Just post flyers thru letterboxes, advertise locally at low cost. Start with basic weeding/hedge cutting /mowing etc. It might take a couple of years to build up and is very seasonal.
For a bit of investment, cutting/processing and then selling firewood is a good winter alternative. Both jobs can be very hard work, especially if you have no/little equipment, but you can get by.

Place I work at repairs and refurbishes ex-fleet cars and vans for a number of major fleet companies. I work as part of the yard logistics teams, we do a range of things, basic inspections of cars as they arrive, make sure the main inspection building, the ‘barn’ is kept supplied with cars, and the inspected ones moved into storage prior to any necessary repairs or remedial work being carried out, moving cars into longer-term storage once any work has been carried out, and fetching cars for plater drivers or transporters to go to dealers or main auction sites.
I’m outdoors all day, right through the year, I spent a week doing the loading and unloading the ‘barn’, which is either on the main site or across the road, and I could easily walk seven miles a day.
We can have over 3000 cars spread across all the various parts of our site, one of five around the country, and we get to drive anything from a Smart up to a sixteen seat minibus or high-top LWB van.
We don’t get to play with the Teslas, sadly, or the top-end Range Rover Sport on site, either.
We’ve just taken on another five logistics staff, and more workshop staff, as we’re going over to 24 hour workshop operations, due to increasing amounts of work.

Dog Walker

Few similar suggestions up there but the geotechnical / railways isn't a bad about. I work for a GI company and also do so some earthworks inspection work on the side. You have to really be ok with poor weather, oh and ruddy brambles.
It your in Kent might be worth looking at RSK / Soils or Socotec and see if they have monitoring tech or drilling positions? Just have a thick skin... Drillers are a breed apart

There's a question. There's a lot of competition, recent Fix the Fells social media post said they had somewhere around 1,000 applicants to joint their teams doing footpath repairs.

A lot of people who have countryside management jobs tend to have gone through the volunteer route to build experience. The main places to look are Countryside Jobs Service and Environment Job. Green Recovery Challenge Fund seems to have created a lot of trainee type jobs. Heritage Lottery projects have a lot of apprenticeships. Not sure what happens over the next few years - green is rising up the agenda but there is a spending review in the autumn which may (very probably) will result in cuts.

Not all countryside jobs are outside. I only get out a day or two every couple of weeks at the moment. I spend a lot of time just doing normal project management stuff. Previous jobs I've been out on the hills every day for two or three months.

Rather than gardening; dry stone walling but it takes a while to build experience and reputation. It's also worth keeping an eye on the main upland contractors. There's a lot of peat restoration work going on. Brash spreading is unskilled but might be a route in.

I work in IT but since switching to home working roles, things have improved, I can just go out on the bike when I fancy it. So couldn't you get wfh roles, or go freelance?
I remember the days of labouring in my summer holidays at uni and don't want to go back to that.

Environment Agency as a River Operative in FCERM. We take people on with no experience and all training is given. Depending on the area where you work you could get trained in chainsaw, boats, excavators, and a host of other skills. Though must be prepared to work in all weather (we have a tendency to be busy when it rains), do an incident response role, and shift work in incidents if required.

And once you’re in you have the opportunity to move on.

I have had a serious go three or four times at getting a job with the Environment Agency.

Not boasting, but I thought my CV was pretty well-suited - BSc (1st class) in physical geography, PhD in palaeoenvironmental reconstruction that included lots of field work, a tiny bit of freelance archaeology consultancy, some outdoor volunteering with the Field Studies Council, and I've also worked at Defra.

I didn't get one flipping interview 😀 !

(This was about a decade ago mind you, hopefully things have changed a bit)

Traffic Warden 🙂

i found my perfect job the other day, apart from the significant paycut and total lack of qualifications.

Lighthouse Technician.

Vacancies | Trinity House

On a more serious note, I would personally stay away from work that involved manual labour. As you get older and pick up injuries this sort of work can’t become really hard.

I'd tend to disagree with that and say try to get plenty of manual labour in as it keeps your muscles strong, especially those in the back and shoulders.
Nobody is saying you have to overdo it. But having them takes the strain off the skeletal system. Less chance of slipping a disc if the muscles surrounding the back are in least ways kept in reasonable order.
Most people here being cyclists will already have strength in that area, just saying a little more couldn't hurt.

Mobile telecoms. You will have useful skills that are transferable from IT to telecoms industry as it relies more and more on IP stuff. If you are not afraid of heights then there is also aspects of climbing towers within the roles.
Look at Ericsson, O2, Vodafone for these jobs.
Great in summer but can be tough in winter 50m up a mast in the rain and freezing conditions but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I too work on mobile telecoms, but for. Mitie I look after air conditioning and electrical/fabric side of things
It can be hard work somedays, and on call I've done 23hr shifts but mostly pootle about ticking over.

The first few months of my Civil Engineering career (in winter) were spent in a cradle under Boothferry Bridge knocking lumps of rust off and measuring what was left. One of the partners of the company thereafter had me marked down as someone who "didn't mind a bit of discomfort" (ooh err). That led to a variety of "interesting" assignments. I've crawled along bits of Thirlmere aqueduct (it had been emptied). We also had the gig of structural surveys on the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank but sadly I never got to do that, it was sort of a "dead man's shoes" job, but no-one ever fell off.

I work outdoors all year round in all weathers (gritting at 4am in -9c a couple of months back for example). As the saying goes, if you’re cold you ain’t working hard enough!

I’d tend to disagree with that and say try to get plenty of manual labour in as it keeps your muscles strong, especially those in the back and shoulders.

There is something called the exercise paradox - for office / sedentry roles, exercise increases life expectancy but people with manual labour jobs don't live as long as those in non manual roles (on average).

I think that is more around general trends outside of work. Manual work is very diverse but there is still lingering class divides with in the statistics. I think this will change as the statistics on death are always going to be a generation out.

Manual work keeps you strong and fit, but when you injure you do it bigger.
One of our tree surgeons tore his bicep ligaments from his shoulder, boss has had hernia fixed, I've torn muscle tissue in back and shoulder that have left me on 'light' duties for months. These don't seem to be uncommon things in our line of work.

Guess you need to know what outdoors job you want, there's a lot of stuff that isn't indoors, from hard labour to jollies around the countryside.

How do I find a job outdoors?

Look through the window of a Job Centre rather than searching online.

Yup my boss has been off a year now with back problems