Forestry Worker CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a forestry worker with about eight seasons: restocking, respacing and weeding for a contract crew, then a seasonal forestry operative job on a public forest district. The person and the employers are made up. Copy the structure and swap in your own sites, rates and certificate dates.

Forestry hiring is fast and mostly done by the contractor, the forest works supervisor or a district forester, not by an HR department. They are answering four questions before they decide to ring you.

• Can you run a saw and keep it running? Saw experience plus CS30 and CS31 (and CS32 for bigger trees) beats a general "hard worker" claim every time. Industry safety guidance from FISA expects chainsaw users to hold the right certificates of competence.
• What is your production? Trees planted per day, hectares respaced per shift, kilometres of line cleared per month. A number tells them what your day costs them.
• Are you fully ticketed? Chainsaw certificates, PA1/PA6 for weeding and Emergency First Aid at Work +F mean the contractor can put you on any job they have, from planting and weeding to felling, and many hire for that reason alone.
• Can you drive, and will you finish the season? A clean licence, being able to tow a trailer, and full seasons listed end to end.

“I get 60 applications for a planting crew and half say "physically fit, willing to work outdoors". That tells me nothing. The ones I call wrote 1,100 trees a day, 94 per cent on plot checks, and finished three contracts with the same outfit. If you also have your saw tickets and first aid, you go to the top of the pile.”

Three to four lines at the top. Lead with seasons, then the type of work, then a number and your chainsaw and first aid certificates. If you have no seasons yet, write a career objective instead and put your training and your fitness in it.

Weak bullets describe the job. Strong bullets describe your output on that job: species, ground, rate, specification, inspection result. Here are common forestry duties rewritten.

Keep the skills box to things a contractor can test on day one. Split it into work you can do, kit you can run, and the ground you can handle.

Field work skills:

• Chainsaw felling, snedding and cross-cutting of small to medium trees
• Spade and notch planting; correct depth, spacing and root placement
• Respacing and thinning to a written specification
• Brash clearance and windrowing
• Restocking, survival and mensuration plots; species and height tallies
• Tree marking for thinning, boundary flagging and paint
• Windblow clearance, deer fence building and repair

Tools and equipment:

• Chainsaws (Stihl and Husqvarna), wedges, felling lever, file and depth gauge
• Clearing saw, pole saw, chipper
• Knapsack sprayer and calibrated mix
• Compass, clinometer, diameter tape, increment borer, relascope
• Handheld GPS and mapping apps (Avenza, ArcGIS Field Maps)
• ATV, UTV, 4x4 pickup with trailer, forest roads in snow
• Hand winch, lifting tackle and hand tools for hung-up trees

The things crews actually complain about, so say them plainly:

• Carrying 20 kg of kit over steep, brashy ground for a full shift
• Working in heat, rain, snow and midges, and staying away from home in the week
• Long drives before and after a shift, early starts, 10 to 14 days on
• Following a spacing or specification sheet without needing a second check
• Basic Polish or English, whichever your crew is short of

Forestry work has no single national licence for crew members, but there is a short list of certificates every forestry contractor recognises. Give the awarding body, the unit and the date, because some need refreshing.

Two things to get right. Chainsaw certificates are awarded by City & Guilds NPTC or Lantra Awards after training and an assessment, and FISA safety guidance expects saw operators to keep their skills current with refresher training, so give the dates. And do not call yourself a Chartered Forester: that title comes from the Institute of Chartered Foresters and needs professional membership, so misusing it ends your application.

First-season crews are hired on fitness, attitude and availability. Almost nobody starts with forestry experience, so build the page out of what you do have.

1. 1Put your availability at the very top: "Available from October for the planting season, willing to travel and stay away in the week." That single line answers the contractor's first worry.
2. 2List any outdoor physical work as its own job: farm, fencing, roofing, landscaping crew, removals, estate work. Say what you carried and for how long.
3. 3Ask about a forestry apprenticeship or traineeship (for example a Level 2 forest operative apprenticeship) if you are starting from scratch. Even the first few weeks of training put you ahead.
4. 4Take CS30 and CS31 at a land-based college or an approved training provider. It takes about a week of training plus the assessment, and it is the single best line on a first-season CV.
5. 5Get Emergency First Aid at Work +F. It is a short course and most forestry sites expect it anyway.
6. 6Say you have a full licence and a clean record, and whether you can tow a trailer.

• One page. Two only if you have a forestry degree plus a long list of certificates.
• No photo and no date of birth. UK CVs do not carry them.
• Put a Certificates or Training block near the top, above experience. Your chainsaw tickets and first aid +F are the first thing they hunt for.
• For jobs with the public forest bodies (Forestry England, Forestry and Land Scotland, Natural Resources Wales) the process is different: you usually apply through an online form with questions about your experience and behaviours. Keep this one-page CV for contractors and private estates, and use the form to give fuller examples.

Mirror the advert's words. Restocking, silviculture, respacing, thinning, brash, windblow, harvesting, chainsaw operator, forest operative, notch planting, weeding, deer fencing, line clearance, UKFS (the UK Forestry Standard), felling licence. If the advert says "vegetation management" and you wrote "brush clearing", add their phrase in brackets once. In the US the same job is often advertised as forestry technician or silviculture worker, the document is a resume and fire training names replace UK tickets; if you are applying to a UK employer, use the UK terms.