Florida is an extremely popular place with RVers in the winter months. Granted early fall not as much as from January to March of each year. So, that means that if you want any kind of workamping assignment here from about October to March then you should apply early and often as possible. You may even have to accept some assignments in areas of Florida that you might want to go just to get a position that will lead to others down the road. Referrals and references are very important to getting some of the more coveted assignments like those booked years in advance. Granted, there are a few parks that keep inviting the same people back each year and that really shouldn’t happen with any of the public land areas like state parks and wildlife refuges. Personally, I think they should post a limit of every other year or something so that other people would have a chance at working at the more popular places in Southeast and Southwest Florida. But, again, that is where those references and referrals from your fellow workampers come into play.
I can think of at least 3 assignments that I was given because either I worked with one of that park’s regular workampers or the park ranger recommended me. It really pays to participate when you can with social gatherings with your fellow workampers and park rangers as well as making sure you do a good job with each of your assignments. I would go so far as to really maintain a “Customer Service” face with every encounter you have with the public during your workamping assignments too. We had canoe/kayak campers coming in off the river to stay overnight at one of our assignments with the Suwannee River Wilderness Trail. I always greet each of our visitors and talk a little bit about their journey and make sure they knew where everything was in the camping area, some of the rules, and asked how their trip was going. One such visitor turned out to be a park ranger on vacation who wanted my name and phone number so that he could recommend us to their coordinator at his park for the coming year. I also had one park ranger/volunteer coordinator who likes to go camping in her travel trailer every week or so and I’m sure she is also on the lookout for future workampers for her park.
You might want to start collecting personal cellphone numbers and email addresses of each of the park rangers/workampers you have a good working relationship. Apparently, the park rangers like to move around quite a lot during their careers and the workampers like to work with people they know and can rely on to get the job done. Each of the volunteer coordinators will check your references when they receive your application. They would prefer to speak to their fellow coordinators from other parks or even workampers they have worked with in the past. You will want to keep an updated copy of applications you have filled out in the past so that you can copy and paste your information into each of the online applications you have to fill out. For some reason, I have had to fill out one online to go to the district volunteer coordinator and then again for the park’s records so having a copy saves time and aggravation. If you have volunteered with Florida State Parks in the past you should have a user name and password on their Volunteer Portal website. They have made some changes to the site and have added quite a bit of new information so check it out.
If you have Excel you can view a listing of the current Florida State Park Volunteer Opportunities on the Volunteer Portal dated 08/08/2018. They need to add a link on the job title to a document describing what that person does. FlaStateParkWorkampinList
You must be logged in to post a comment.