Join Our Team: Employment Opportunities at Folklore Contracting in Reforestation & Silviculture

Our Hiring Process

Over the past decade or so, Folklore has traditionally operated from four to six camps, ranging in size from twenty to fifty planters each. For 2025, we are going to be running six camps. Our head office does not do the hiring for the camps. Instead, this task is delegated to the camp managers, who are often referred to as supervisors. Each supervisor oversees from two to six crew leaders, and works with these leaders to ensure that all employees will work well together as a cohesive team. Most of Folklore's camps are composed of about fifty to seventy percent experienced planters, with a relatively small percentage of inexperienced planters compared to many of our peers in northern British Columbia.

If you wish to apply for a planting position with our company, the easiest way is to apply online via email. Listed below will be the information that will be required to ensure that your application receives the attention that it deserves. Applications which are made to our head office are examined and sorted, and are then forwarded to one or more of the appropriate supervisors who might be interested in reviewing your application.

Our next planting season will start in late April and early May of 2025. There is no "best" time to apply, although we typically only seek applications in the winter and spring, from approximately early January through early May. Traditionally, most hiring seems to take place between mid-January and early February for the upcoming summer season. Finding a position in March or April can sometimes be more difficult, so start your job search early! However, you should be aware that crew schedules and logistics can change on a weekly basis as the upcoming season is mapped out, and sometimes a crew leader who previously had no openings may suddenly find the need for an extra planter or two at the last minute, in late April.

If you are not a Canadian citizen, you should ensure that you have a Canadian work visa in place and secured before applying. We do not assist with 'sponsored' work visa applications. Please note: We receive thousands of emails every year from non-Canadians. If you are not a Canadian applicant and you do not include a working holiday visa with your application, we will not respond to your inquiry.

We have an excellent season lined up for 2025, and we encourage experienced planters to reach out to us now by sending an email to hiring@folklorecontracting.email.

If you are a first-time planter, or if you're looking for opportunities for kitchen staff, applications for our 2025 season will open on January 6th, 2025. Please wait until on or after that date to apply, as we will start reviewing fresh applications only from that date forward. We have guidelines below about how to maximize the effectiveness of your application.

Additional Support & Management Positions

The rest of this page is targeted mostly at persons interested in joining Folklore as tree planters. However, we sometimes do external hiring of new management and support staff, to complement our internal advancement program. We will add information here about potential staffing position opportunities in January 2025.

Our Strengths

Folklore places a high emphasis on safety. The resources in our operations meet or exceed provincial standards in all areas, ranging from first aid equipment on site, to the number of trained occupational first aid professionals (OFA3's and OFA1's). All of our drivers go through pre-season training courses, and must have provided an acceptable driving history abstract before being approved as a potential driver.

All of our vehicles are remotely GPS-monitored to ensure compliance with speed limits. We do not use vans or buses. All of our vehicles are crew cab pickups or crummies mounted on F550 pickup chassis. All of our vehicles are 4-wheel drive. Every vehicle gets a safety and maintance inspection before the season starts, and then undergoes regular maintenance and full safety inspections at licensed mechanical facilities every four weeks during the season. Our crummies are re-inspected by an engineering certification firm every year.

We place a high emphasis on training. Our first year planters have the option to start their training program months before they start field work, through a combination of videos, books and other printed matter, and one-on-one phone calls or videoconferencing with their crew leaders (using facetime, skype, or related services). Our management personnel go through significant third-party training and certification programs in the pre-season, including driver training, ATV training, first aid training, transportation of dangerous goods, S-100 fire suppression, and other courses.

We pay our employees according to BC's provincial employment standards legislation (or Alberta standards when working in Alberta). All employees are topped up to minimum wage in any pay period during which their piece-rate earnings are less than minimum wage. These rates also account for overtime where applicable, ie. based on time and a half for all hours after 8 hours in a day or after 40 hours in a single week. Our minimum wage equivalency rates for the 2023 season are $15.00 per hour on all Alberta projects, and $15.65 per hour on all BC projects. These rates are BEFORE overtime is factored in.

With respect to hours worked, we calculate these rates based upon full portal-to-portal hours (unlike some of our competitors), from the time that you leave camp until the time that you return to camp. It is typical for our employees to be awarded approximately 11 hours per work day, based upon departure from camp at 7am and return to camp by 6pm. Some of our competitors only record 8 hours per day for hours worked, which is detrimental to their employees. Recording full portal-to-portal hours is important not just for our first-time planters as they ramp up to full production in the first month of work, but also to our highly productive long-term employees who require a Record of Employment at the end of their seasonal work term.

We pay for a significant number of non-planting tasks and supplies that many of our competitors don't cover:

If a planter is involved in setting up a camp, we pay for that labour.
If a planter is involved in tearing down and moving a camp, we pay for that labour.
If a planter assists with the unloading of a tree reefer, we pay for that labour.
We pay for the flagging tape that planters use.
We do not require planters to buy their own silvicool tarps, for their personal tree caches.

Folklore strives to set the standard for professionalism with respect to equipment and operations in our remote camps. We invest significantly in kitchens, showers, and other camp infrastructure to ensure that our planters have the best possible remote tent camp living conditions based upon the conditions that we work in. We truck in potable water to all of our camps for drinking water and kitchen use, by using certified water delivery services, and all water deliveries are tested on-site to ensure that they meet Food Safe regulations. All of our camp structures are carefully cleaned, inspected, and serviced each fall and winter during the off-season, including pumps, generators, and all other equipment.

We generally seek planting contracts which are on the easy end of the spectrum with respect to technical specifications, to ensure a relatively easy ramp-up period for our first-time planters. Company-wide, our camps typically exceed an average of greater than 70% experienced planters, so our first-year planters are usually surrounded by a relatively high number of experienced co-workers to assist with mentoring and moral support.

To see an example of what you might expect to experience in one of our camps, visit www.replant.ca/jobs

How to Apply

If you wish to apply for a position with Folklore, you should send an application by e-mail to hiring@folklorecontracting.email. Again, if you're an inexperienced applicant or looking for support staff opportunities, please wait until January 6th, 2025 to submit your application, as our office staff work reduced hours in December and during the holidays.

Due to the large number of applications that we receive, we cannot guarantee that you will receive a response to your application, although we usually try to acknowledge that we have received your email. For maximum effectiveness, your application should include the following information:

A brief description (300-500 words) about your personal history. You can tell us about where you were born, places you've lived, schools you've gone to, hobbies, sports, and previous jobs that you've held.
Why do you want to plant in the upcoming season?
Why are you specifically interested in working for Folklore Contracting as opposed to any other company?
Do you know anyone else who works with Folklore? Who?
For experienced planters: What experience do you have? Give us as much detail as possible. We'd like to know about previous companies you've worked for, who your foremen/supervisors were at these companies, and any contracts you've worked on (which places, and for which lumber companies or government agencies, if you can remember). What types of ground have you worked? (ie. plant-as-is/raw/unprepped, trenching, ripper plow, mounding, drags, burns, etc.). What price ranges did you get for these types of prep? What was your average/high/low daily production?
Also for experienced planters: How would you classify yourself as a planter? Do you prefer to aim for high or moderate quality? Are you a "highballer" or a "slow and steady" planter? Is high priced, slow ground your preference, or do you like low-priced/fast ground contracts? What are your favorite working conditions, in terms of site prep, weather conditions, slope, terrain, geography, and teamwork vs. solitary work?
For first-time planters: How much do you know about tree planting so far? What have you used as online sources for research? Have you read any books about tree planting? Have you looked at many photos or videos that demonstrate what is involved in commercial tree planting? Do you have any experience with camping or tripping? Do you have any experience with heavy-duty outdoor work, such as farm work or woofing? Here are some characteristics that often apply to successful first-time planters: physically fit, independent, emotionally mature, production oriented, able to work as a team member.
Do you have any medical conditions we should be aware of? Have you ever experienced back, knee, wrist, or shoulder problems, or any forms of tendonitis? Some chronic injuries can reduce your chance of success in a production-oriented environment. Do you know if you are at risk for analphylaxis from insect stings? If so, do you carry an epi-pen for emergency situations?
Do you have any special certificates or abilities that we should be aware of, such as advanced first aid training, transportation of dangerous goods certification, class 4 (or lower) driver's license (multi-passenger commercial transport or air brakes), danger tree assessor certification, faller's certification, or mechanical training? It is also useful to mention if you have a full and unrestricted driver's license, with a good driving record. We rarely use first-time employees as drivers, but occasionally there are opportunities to start training as a backup driver, with the intent of becoming a regular driver in a future season.
What motivates you?
Please let us know if you have a preference to work on a large crew versus a small crew, or if you have a preference for your crew leader to be male or female.
Applicants must be available for work starting in early May. Some camps will start planting in mid to late April of 2023, but you should be available to commence employment no later than May 3rd, regardless of which camp you're in. You must be available to work until the end of July. When you apply, please indicate the earliest possible start date in April or early May that you would be able to arrive for work in BC. If you are a university student who does not yet have your exam schedule, just indicate that your exam schedule is still pending. It will help if you can suggest an exact date for the earliest date that you could be available to arrive in Prince George, because different camps start at different times, and knowing your availability will help us determine which camps you would be most suited for.
Please indicate whether you are applying as an individual applicant, or as part of a pair or group. Note that we typically only interview and hire individual applicants, not pairs or groups, unless the applicants each have a full season of previous planting experience.
When sharing your resume and cover letter, please attach them to your email as PDF files rather than embedding them as a URL. If you include links to shared cloud documents, some of our hiring personnel may not be able to open them. Do not include "Page" files for the Mac O/S, as we run Windows machines. A standalone PDF can be opened on all operating systems, and is never tied to a specific recipient email account for read-access.
Please ensure that your application includes both a correct email address and a phone number. We typically use email for initial communication, but move to phone interviews for those who pass initial screening. Ensure that you check your spam folder occasionally if you haven't heard from us within a week of your application, in case we replied to you and our message got filtered by your email provider.

OFA3 First Aiders: We typically seek planting applications from candidates who already have OFA3 first aid certification. If this applies to you, please mention this as the opening line in your application email.

Crew Leaders: Although we typically promote our management from within, we also run half a dozen camps with more than thirty crew leaders in total in any given planting season. We do end up hiring one or two experienced crew leaders externally some years. We may have crew leader positions available for experienced candidates in 2023. Please email us if you're an experienced crew leader who would like to start a conversation.

Quality Checkers: Quality checkers are responsible for helping our management team assess internal quality and density. Applicants should have two previous seasons of experience working as a commercial tree planter, or one season of planting plus at least one full year in a college-level forestry or forest tech program. Quality checker applicants should ideally also have a valid unrestricted Class 5 license (or better) with a relatively clean driving record, plus some experience driving full-sized pickup trucks. For more details about this job position, please email us.

Kitchen Staff: Each of our camps has a full-time head cook and a full-time assistant cook. For 2023, we do not currently have any openings available for kitchen staff.

All of the above information should be quite sufficient to give us a thorough background on you. If you wish to include a traditional resume with your application, we welcome you to include that too, although your answers to the previous set of questions will ultimately be of the most value to us.

If you would like further information to assist with your research about what tree planting entails, we recommend that you download a free digital copy of Step By Step, a training textbook about tree planting which was authored by one of our camp supervisors.

We thank all applicants for your consideration, and for the time that you've invested to express your interest in working with our company.