A little bit of Centennial fun!

Looking For Contributors!

Hello everyone.

With every new spring a fresh class of Park Service staff, concessionaires, guides, volunteers, and tourism-based employees starts winding up for the busy summer season. If you're part of these groups (or another relevant group that we've missed) and want to be a contributor to the blog feel free to shoot us an email or leave us a comment and we'd love to give you some space on this blog to talk about your experience!

-CBD.

The odds of working for the National Park Service.

Editor's note: This post has received a response for being very negative. That was not the intent. This does not exist to bash the process, just to serve as an interesting tidbit for those thinking about a Park Service career.

I have also been informed that the data used to generate this post is not sound, as it is based on anecdotes does not include the innumerable possible variables that go into each individual's job search. As such, you should use this post for a general idea, not as a factual data source. 

I will also fully admit that I am not a statistician, and there are likely better ways to communicate this data than a few lines of text and a cheesy infographic. For better or worse I'm just a random person who throws words and picture out in the hopes that it might provide a look inside a lifestyle that many people daydream about. If you have a suggestion on how to better convey this information please leave a comment and I will happily work to incorporate the changes.

And now back to your regularly scheduled post.
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Generally more than 100 people apply for each job vacancy in the National Park Service. Every year, this comes out to over 800,000 applications for a very small pool of jobs.

How small you ask?

Tiny. 


How tiny?

At the height of staffing in summer, NPS only has about about 22,000 employees nationwide.

Those 22,000 employees serve 411 designated NPS units (Full list here) spread across half of the planet, plus an additional stack of Regional and National administrative offices.

Not bad on a budget of around $44,000,000 in 2015. Out of the full Federal budget of $3,688,000,000,000 it's about 1/10th of 1% when you do the math.

But, back to the tiny pool of Park Service jobs.

Every year the Park Service advertises about 8,000 jobs. The vast majority of these are seasonal positions, aka 1039s. These positions are only funded to work for 1039 hours, or just under 6 months at full time. Seasonal positions are the bulk of NPS employment, providing critical staff for parks during the busy summer season, and ramping down staff levels during the off season. They're generally the "foot in the door" to build a career in the Park Service, and many employees often spend 5-10 years bouncing from park to park in six-month stints before finally getting one of the next type of positions.

The next layer of NPS jobs are "Term" positions. Term jobs generally have a 4-year maximum duration, but are subject to renewal and funding restrictions every fiscal year. They're more stable than Seasonal positions, but it can still be a very hard life knowing that every 365 days your job can (and often does) evaporate into thin air.

Last, you have the permanent jobs.  Of the 8,000 jobs hired per year, these make up less than 500, or about 6% of total hires. These are the grail of Park Service careers, allowing an employee to occupy a position for as long as they wish. These positions generally make a livable wage and provide the most stable employment NPS offers. Once you get into a permanent job, you can work at it for the rest of your life if you chose to do so (assuming you perform well, don't piss off your boss too badly, and the duties of the job is are still needed).

As you can probably guess, these jobs are all highly competitive. But just how competitive you ask? Take a look at the graphic below.

VIP - Becoming part of the National Park Service, without a full time commitment.

Another short post. If you're interested in the National Park Service, but don't have space in your life for the commitment of a full time job, please consider becoming one of the NPS Volunteers In Parks (VIPs).

Our VIPs help operate every park in the system, often with only a small time commitment: A few hours here, a day or two there over a long weekend. We also have VIPs that return for an entire season, year after year, turning a National Park into their home away from home.

We also have a handful of the most amazing, dedicated, and caring VIPs who have dedicated years of their lives to the NPS. Sjors Hosrtman at Grand Canyon has volunteered more than 55,000 hours over the last 27 years! More info about his amazing story here.

We take VIPs in almost every field, and if you're willing to work we're willing to find a way for you to help! Find more info at http://www.nps.gov/Volunteer .
Or
Check out the video at at the volunteer program Facebook page. 

VIP Volunteers-In-Parks
How can you serve our National Parks? Check out our new video about the Volunteers In Parks (VIP) program and how we’re partnering with American Express to get 1 million community members volunteering in our National Parks and public lands. #findyourpark #encuentraTuParque #volunteer #serve #amexserves #NPS100
Posted by National Park Service Volunteers-In-Parks on Wednesday, December 30, 2015

We're getting a movie! America Wild: A National Parks Adventure

Hi everybody!

With all the craziness in life the blog doesn't get a ton of updating anymore, but this one was big enough that it's worth a dedicated post (even if it is a short one).

After months under cover and subject to numerous internal rumors we can finally announce:

The National Park Service is getting a feature length movie for the centennial! 

It is titled "America Wild: A National Parks Adventure". And will be released worldwide in February 2016!

The film is being produced by MacGillivray Freeman Films, a highly renowned IMAX studio. For those who are not familial with the IMAX world, these are the rockstars that produced Everest, which is the highest grossing IMAX film of all time. Trailer for Everest Here

A brief blurb about the upcoming NPS movie is posted on the MacGillivray Freemen Website here. And I'll copy the text here, for those that don't wish to click through.

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AMERICA WILD: A NATIONAL PARKS ADVENTURE

The U.S. National Park Service turns 100 years old in 2016, marking a major milestone in the preservation of America’s wild, pristine spaces. America Wild: A National Parks Adventure brings the magnificence of these landscapes to the giant screen and introduces us to compelling individuals who live in, explore or work in these great places.  



Today’s national parks system includes more than 400 iconic landmarks—spectacularly wild and beautiful places like Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Everglades and Glacier National Park that represent the heritage and spirit of America and make a rich pallet for a giant-screen film.

In partnership with Brand USA. Presented by Expedia. Available February 2016.
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And, because we all know you come to this blog for the eye candy of beautiful pictures of the National Parks, we present you with the trailer! (Which is ABSOLUTELY WORTH FULL-SCREEN VIEWING!)

The Centennial: You say it's your birthday? Well it's my birthday too!

Full disclosure: This blog is produced by National Park Service employees in their free time. None of it is officially guided, approved, managed, or permitted by NPS. It should not be taken as anything official, and any content from it should not be considered the opinion of the National Park Service. What I'm really try to say is that this is a blog about the National Park Service, not a National Park Service Blog. To be honest we don't even know if we're really allowed to have this blog, but no one has yelled at us to stop yet, so it's probably ok.

So, this has been a BIG thing in planning, but we weren't allowed to share any of it publicly until it was officially announced. It been hard to keep it quiet, because as Parkies we want to scream about all the amazing things in NPS until someone throws us off the edge of the Grand Canyon. Now that it's all public, here goes:

The National Park Service turns 100 in 2016! And because we're just *that* cool we're gonna make our party so big that it won't even fit in a whole year, let alone a day!

It's been branded as the Centennial movement and there's a huge push to ensure we're still a relevant organization. Some parts of our mission are simple, like protecting natural sites from development. Others are a bit different, because they focus on remembering powerful events that shaped us as a country. Some of these sites are well known, like Appomattox Court House National Historical Park where the Civil war ended, or Ellis Island where millions of immigrants passed through on their way to the United States. Others are less well known, especially those from the modern era. Places like  César E. Chávez National Monument in California or The Stonewall Inn (and surrounding area) that is considered one of the most important sites of the LGBT civil rights movement.

Almost every major city has a National Park Service presence, but many people only associate the idea of the National Parks with places out West that they may never get to see. The Park Service is doing it's best to educate the public about how we can serve them, even if they don't make a multi-state trip to go Visit the Red Rocks of Zion or the lush rain forests of Olympic. We want to help people find their park, and there's going to be a TON of work on our part to do so.

The public facing focus of the Centennial is going to be the Find Your Park campaign! This is going to be a HUGE push to get people to come join us in the parks. Think TV, magazines, billboards, newspapers, social media, movies, EVERYTHING! As a serious Parkie this just makes me want to Squee with joy! We dump every ounce of our energy into trying to get people to enjoy the places we protect for them and so many people don't even know we exist. It will be really good to (hopefully) see people realize that we exist to serve THEM. Everything we do is for the general public and we really want them to come take advantage of it.

We've got big tie-ins coming as well. You know what people like? Parades! You know what one of the biggest parades on earth is? The Rose Parade! You know how many countries the Rose Parade is broadcast to? 200! You know what the theme of the 2016 Rose Parade is gonna be? THE FREAKING NATIONAL PARKS! Seriously, the amount of Parkie Pride is almost oozing out of my pores right now!

You know what else people like? Movies! You like having your eyeballs filled with giant pictures of beautiful places THAT BELONG TO YOU? We're gonna do that too! Can't say more yet, but just know that it will be awesome!

Well, there's a ball of awesome about the great stuff coming in the next year. If you want up to the minute info both the National Park Foundation Facebook page and the official National Park Service Facebook page will both be overflowing with info about all the cool stuff we're doing. Keep an eye on them and get out and enjoy it, because in the end it's EVERYBODY'S party!

Moving up and moving out: Letting go in the Park Service. - Part 1. Context.

Note: This post and the one that will follow it are two parts to the same story. It started with a brief post about moving on to bigger and better Park Service jobs, but after writing it I realized that without an understanding of the culture inside NPS it wouldn't convey the true emotional weight. This blog is dedicated to helping people get an inside view of what life in the Park Service is like, so I decided it would be better to provide the context first (In this post), and then follow up with the story in the next post. Both ended up significantly longer than I expected, but I wanted paint the complete picture to really explain why this was such a meaningful experience for us.

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At some point in their lives everybody moves away from home. For some people that time is when they go off to college, for others it's their first real job. For me, it was leaving my Home Park.

First, let's put a little bit of Park Service lingo out there: 

"Home Park"

A home park isn't a designated base that we're each assigned to upon our Park Service Birth. There's not a box on a form somewhere that says "Your home park is _________ ", and it's not something official you'll find filed somewhere in Human Resources. 

A person's "Home Park" is generally the first park they ever worked in. But, not always. Sometimes it's the first Park they fell in love with, their favorite Park Service site, or even a site they never even had a direct connection with, but feel strongly attached to. It's a nebulous, touchy-feely thing (like many things in NPS) but it's a strong piece of a Parkie's identity.

A person's Home Park is self-declared, and as such normally holds great meaning to them. In many ways, it marks a person's birth as a Parkie and can tell you a lot about a person. Eastern, Western, Southern, or Northern. Urban or rural. Monument, Historic, Recreation Area, Lakeshore, or Park; it can show what brought them to the Service, or what kept them. It can give hints of their personality though an infatuation with a hidden, quiet, secluded location or display an outgoing personality expressed through the brash love of a big, boisterous, untamed wilderness. It can tell you where they came from and where they've been since then. Home Parks can hold great meaning to people. Experiences, stories, friends, goals (and tattoos!) can all be tied to where you found your niche, made your park, and were reborn into your new home. As people have immense pride in home parks, it's common to discuss in parkie circles not just the park you currently work at, but the home park that shaped you.

So there, good readers, is a overly verbose explanation of a shadowy half-secret part of Park Service culture. 

I might also mention that while "Home Parks" are somewhat of a park-insider term, there's going to be very big push for the National Park Service's centennial in 2016 to help people find their own park. I can't say much yet, but what I can say is that It's gonna be an awesome year if you love the National Parks!

We now move on to the amazing community, the not-shadowy half-secret of the Park Service:

Over an NPS career you build a genealogy of your parks. From your home park you move and grow, and with each jump you help weave the tangled social fabric that makes the Park Service such a tight knit community. Throughout a Park Service career you will likely bounce from place to place for seasons, jobs, promotions, and status. Every time you land in a new site you're displaced, alone, and in a strange new land. Repeat this at hundreds of Park Service sites across the country (and a few we have scattered across the world) you build a working community that understands the difficulty of relocation and works to ease the transition as people come and go. Luckily, most of us share our love of the parks, so the first introductions almost always have an easy topic as people share "their" part of the Park Service.

Add in the remoteness of many parks and the small populations that serve them and you have the foundation for the Park Service culture of incredibly strong, friendly, supportive, self-sufficient communities, complete with their own stores, schools, hospitals, and other services. In a big place like Grand Canyon you have an amazingly tight knit community that exists as an island, even as millions of tourists flow through it every year. The locals all know each other, and if you have a job that lets you interact with other locals it's very common that anywhere you go you'll know every single local there. 

It can be a difficult transition for people who are used to a life with anonymity, or a life that their work and home lives are two very separate things. In many parks there's not really an on duty or off duty. You spend your free time giving lost tourists directions, and your work time joking with your friends (who also happen to be your coworkers, your bosses, your subordinates, the person serving your lunch, etc.) You often end up living every moment of your life as a living, breathing, part of the park, whether you want to or not. Some people hate this, and it chases them away from the Park Service, but others (like me) flourish in it. Your life becomes your park, and helping people see and feel the the place that means so much to you can be an amazing thing. It can give a meaning and purpose to live that might otherwise be lacking, and sometimes you get to feel like you really make a difference to someone. 

Back on topic: Now, you have a strong community system with constantly relocating employees with shared interests. What happens? Strong social networks! With only 20,000-30,000 employees (Depending on who’s counting) NPS is a pretty small organization, and it’s an organization in which many people spend whole careers. Match this with the high relocation rate and it’s very likely that only have a few (if any) degrees of separation from employees at any other park.

Take this example:

In 2012 SaintLost and I visited Puerto Rico. We did very little advanced planning, and had no real plans ahead of time to visit the National Park Site there (San Juan NHS). To be honest it hadn't really occurred to me that that NPS had a presence there, as Puerto Rico wasn't really on my radar as someone who was raised in a Western state. 

After a few days drinking Pina Coladas in San Juan we decided to mosey over and visit Castillo San Cristobal. We pranced over to the interpretive area near the entrance and chatted with the Ranger. We talked about his park and our park and wandered off to go explore. 

After an hour or so we wandered by one of their information desks. As we passed a Ranger said our names. She came over, said hello, and explained that the Ranger that we met when we entered the site had mentioned there were two Parkies visiting from Grand Canyon. 

Image Credit: CBD

One of us had blue hair at the time so I can't imagine we were hard to spot.

The Ranger explained that she had recently transferred from White Sands National Monument and wanted to know if we knew a Ranger she had worked with there (Who had since moved to the Grand Canyon). As a result of the tight knit community at the Canyon, we knew her friend quite well, and we filled her in on the happenings in her former coworker's life while she and another Ranger gave us a tour of the park. 

 Image Credit: CBD

National Park Service and the Caribbean? Sign me up!

That was an amazing experience. More than 2,000 miles away from our home park we were able to walk in and not only be surrounded by our extended Park Service family, but had a single degree of separation from someone. It's an incredibly positive feeling when you realize how far away you really are, but you still feel like you walked right in the door at home.

 Image Credit: CBD

Like many historic doors in the Park Service, walking through this one without looking can have dangerous consequences.

Now, lets take this another degree, because there's no understating how interconnected the Park Service can feel. This month, more than two years after our visit to San Juan, I took an online training. In that training was an employee who worked for San Jaun NHS, and with just a few chats back and forth they had passed on my hellos to the Rangers who I had met all that time ago, reinforcing the community ties that make the Park Service feel like an extended family.

With each Parkie conversation, a new connection is created. Each new connection links a multitude of extended Park Service family members forever, tied by our strong sense of community and love of the places we protect. 

Source: https://www.newton.ac.uk/files/events/themes/idd-350x276.jpg

Okay, that's actually a map of how infectious diseases spread, but I'd bet that Park Service friendship transmissions rates are even higher!

Together we support each other, across parks, across states, and even across countries as US Parks pair with other National Parks all over the world to foster America's Best Idea. 

 Image Credit: CBD