Timber Harvesting Operative (Logger) CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a timber harvesting operative with about eleven years of chainsaw and machine work on private estate and public forest contracts. The person and the contractors are invented. Replace the machines, ground type and production numbers with your own.

Harvesting businesses are small. The person hiring is usually the owner, sometimes reading your CV in a pickup. Four things decide whether they call.

• The machines: which ones you can run and how many hours you have on each. Harvester, forwarder, skidder, timber crane, processor, cable crane. A make helps because cabs and heads differ.
• Production: loads, tonnes or cubic metres per day, and on what ground. Twelve loads on flat, easy ground is not the same as six on a 50% slope.
• Safety: forestry has one of the highest injury rates of any industry in the UK. Lost-time injuries, near misses, and your training record are worth as much as production.
• Whether you show up: wet-ground stoppages, nesting season restrictions and long drives to site. Say what your travel radius is and whether you will stay away during the week.
• A C+E licence, even one you rarely use, makes you more useful and gets mentioned in the first call.

“I hire on two lines. How many hours do you have in the machine, and how long since your last injury. If a CV gives me both without me asking, I call that person first. Everything else, I can find out on site.”

Three or four lines: years, what you run, one production number, then safety and training.

Nobody needs to be told a timber harvesting operative cuts trees. Each bullet should say what ground, what machine, and how much.

Put machines with hours where you can. 'Forwarder, 4,000+ hours' is far stronger than 'forwarder'.

Machines:

• Tracked harvester for clearfell and steep ground
• Wheeled harvester with processing head (cut-to-length)
• Forwarder
• Skidder, grapple or cable
• Timber crane and roadside processor
• Cable crane (skyline) systems, if you have worked them
• Excavator or dozer for racks, tracks and stacking areas
• Timber lorry (with the licence category you hold)

Hand and woodland skills:

• Directional felling with sink and back cut, wedges and bore cutting
• Hazardous and leaning trees, windblow, hung-up tree recovery
• Snedding and cross-cutting to length and diameter specification
• Chainsaw sharpening, chain and bar maintenance, carburettor basics
• Choker setting and rigging
• Timber measurement basics and grade sorting
• Reading a harvesting plan, site boundaries and watercourse buffers
• Winter and wet-ground working

The things that keep you employed: showing up in the dark, driving an hour each way to site, doing your own machine service, and calling out a hazard even when it slows the team down.

Forestry work in the UK comes under general health and safety law enforced by the HSE, and the industry's own safety guides are published by the Forest Industry Safety Accord (FISA), covering chainsaw use, machine work, first aid and protective equipment. Contractors care about your training record because their insurers and clients do.

• First aid, current. Forestry sites are expected to have trained first aiders, usually Emergency First Aid at Work with the forestry +F add-on, so this one is close to mandatory. List the year.
• Chainsaw certificates. City & Guilds NPTC or Lantra CS30 and CS31 are the base, with further units for larger trees and windblow. Name the exact units you completed.
• Machine operator certificates. Harvester, forwarder and timber crane certificates are often asked for; give the machine type, the awarding body and the year.
• Refresher training, where clients or certified forests ask for it. Say which course and the year you last completed it.
• C+E or C licence, with a Driver CPC card if you drive a timber lorry. Even if you are not driving daily, contractors like being able to move a lorry.
• Machine training from a dealer or manufacturer, written as 'dealer training, 2 days, harvester head calibration' rather than as a certificate.

Most people in timber harvesting start on the ground: clearing brash, setting chokers, working the stacking area. Nobody expects a CV full of machine hours. They expect proof you will last past week two.

1. 1Say up front you are applying for groundwork and want to learn a seat. Contractors respect that more than a claim of experience you do not have.
2. 2List outdoor and physical work with a number: farm work, roofing, fencing, construction, tree planting, deer fencing, path work, gamekeeping. Hours in cold and wet is the point.
3. 3Get Emergency First Aid at Work +F before you apply, and CS30 and CS31 if you can. Both cost far less than what a team loses to an injury.
4. 4Say you own your PPE: helmet with visor and ear defenders, chainsaw trousers, chainsaw boots and gloves. It signals you know what the job actually is.
5. 5State your travel radius, whether you will stay away during the week, and whether you have a reliable vehicle. This decides more hires than anything on the skills list.

• One page. Contractors are not reading two.
• Reverse chronological, with the type of business and ground next to each employer.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status. UK CVs leave them out.
• Put machines with hours in a block near the top so the owner does not have to hunt for them.
• Add a line for travel radius, willingness to stay away, and whether you have a C+E licence and a reliable vehicle.
• Many contractors still want a phone call or a printed copy dropped at the yard. Have a clean one-page PDF and a printed copy in the vehicle.

For the larger forestry companies and the public forest bodies that do use an online application system, mirror the advert's words: timber harvesting operative, chainsaw operator, harvester operator, forwarder, cut-to-length, clearfell, thinning, windblow, snedding, cross-cutting, FISA, first aid +F. Those exact terms are what a filter is matching.