The Forest Service, in employing new personnel, seeks to hire men and women who are properly trained for the work and have high ideals and a strong desire to serve the public.
All permanent positions are in the classified Civil Service. Examinations, through which the force is largely recruited, are given for junior foresters and junior range conservationists, whose work is professional and highly technical. Academic training, equivalent to graduation from a recognized college or university, is required. Clerical and fiscal employees also must pass competitive civil-service examinations before appointment.
Most junior professional recruits are men who pass the junior professional examinations; they are first assigned to positions as assistants to district rangers in the national forests or to subordinate lines of technical work. The beginner thus supplements his academic training by field experience that should qualify him for advancement to positions such as that of district ranger, or to comparable positions in research or cooperative work.
In the early days, the forest ranger seldom had a background of technical training, nor did he carry the responsibilities that a district ranger now does. Such positions were often filled by men who passed examinations based almost solely on practical experience in woods-manship and handling livestock. The practice has been changed with the times.
The district forest ranger today is an administrator of a quarter million acres or more and is responsible for the management of all the timber, range, wildlife, water, and recreation resources within his district. He needs both technical training and practical experience.
One line of advancement may lead the young forester or range conservationist from the post of assistant ranger to that of district ranger, then assistant forest supervisor, from which he may advance to a supervisor's position. Additional promotions may eventually take him to the regional forester's office, or even higher.
Another line of progress in national forest administration may be from technical assistant in a forest ranger's district to technician on the supervisor's staff, followed by assignment as technician for an entire region. Other lines of promotion may be in the field of research or in State and private cooperation. Varying combinations of these lines of promotion may be applied in individual cases.
Thorough technical education in advance of employment and wide training through work experience are now considered prerequisite to success in handling current activities and for advancement to the higher positions.
Training through work experience is provided in several ways. One calls for assignments at various periods during the career of the employee (especially the junior professional man) to the many kinds of work in which he needs to obtain additional technical skills and acquire broader viewpoints. The work is carried on as a part of the man's day-to-day duties under the supervision of technicians who are aware of their responsibility for training their assistants. While all supervisory officers receive instruction in the correct methods of training others, some of the district rangers are especially qualified in this respect; to them are assigned the young men who show promise of becoming rangers.
Another method is group training at special training camps and at other central points, where groups of employees, younger men, or those new in their jobs are given short periods of special training in lines of work they will be expected to perform later. At times the older employees are brought together for refresher courses. Correspondence courses, in seasons when the field-work loads are at the lowest, round out the more formal types of in-service training. In addition, annual group meetings of rangers and supervisors (together with more frequent meetings of junior members of the regional office working as a "junior staff" on study projects of interest and value to the regional forester and his immediate assistants) are an important part of the planned in-service training for technical and administrative workers.
The training of the seasonal personnel, including the fire lookouts, parachutists, the timber- and range-survey crews, and other groups, is done both on-the-job and at training camps as an indispensable part of administration.
Employees are encouraged to take special short courses in universities and colleges that relate to special subjects for the benefit of practicing foresters, graziers, and technicians in wildlife management. Technicians engaged in forest and range research are also encouraged to take suitable graduate work and to seek higher degrees.
To broaden his knowledge and experience, a forest officer may be assigned at different times to work outside the field of national forest administration in activities such as research or cooperative work. For the same reason, and often because of the stimulating effect it has on the work to be done, a man may be transferred periodically to other forests and regions. In scheduling transfers and assignments of individuals, consideration is also given the man's special aptitudes and interests, which are determined early in his career and then are developed through training.
A guiding principle in planning transfers is to try to assure sufficient length of tenure in each assignment to provide a reasonably stabilized organization in charge of each ranger district and each other national forest administrative unit. The resulting beneficial effects include an increasingly greater knowledge of the problems and needs of the forest users and other local people, continuity and development of administrative and management practices, and the welfare of the employee and his family. Normally, the minimum and maximum tenure guides (and they are guides only) vary from 4 to 8 years for the key administrative positions in the organization.
For many years civil-service regulations, in recognition of the type of work involved, called for retirement of rangers, forest supervisors, regional foresters, and other national forest employees at 62 years of age. Amendments to the Federal Retirement Act in 1942 and in 1948, however, provided (among other important and related changes) for the retirement of that group of forest officers on an optional basis beginning at age 60, after 30 years of service.
The Forest Service, for the good of the employees and for the good of the organization, has encouraged the continuation of the tradition of retirement at 62.
The career idea is carried out as above outlined by advancement as men become more proficient in their work. Forest supervisors, assistant supervisors, and regional and national officers have come up through the ranks and, in turn, will be succeeded by other men with a broad base of technical knowledge, training, and experience.