Overview

This role is home-based (although you’re welcome in the office as much as you like) and would be ideally suited to a senior ecologist that wants to help drive the deliver BNG services to clients, including surveys, assessments and advice. For probity: we don’t sell or broker the sales of units at Arbtech.

Our BNG services are overseen by Principal Ecologist & BNG Lead, Craig Williams, but to keep up with our growth we have recognised the need to create a dedicated post for a specialist, senior ecologist to help us ramp up the delivery of our BNG product and assist Craig in the training and development of junior consultants.

We envisage you bringing energy, enthusiasm and attention to detail. You will have a well-developed “coaching” mindset and enjoy the challenge of bringing out the best in talented young people. You are unafraid to confront the status quo and enjoy the challenge and responsibility for the mentorship of the next generation of ecologists.

Naturally, you’ll be familiar with best practice standards and legislative drivers that apply to UK habitats and species. However, you will be primarily responsible for the delivery of BNG services for wide array of our clients’ projects and assisting with the QC of the BNG work of junior colleagues. Finally, if you want, we can ensure that you won’t be stuck in an office every day. Aside from delivering your own project work, you’ll be assisting Craig in the up-skilling of our team in the field and delivering bespoke, in-house training packages for all things UK Habs and BNG, particularly once the secondary legislation to support delivering BNG is published.

Essential technical skills:

This role will suit you well if you can demonstrate five or more years’ experience across a broad range of assessments for habitats and protected species, and especially if you have the ability to author higher-level reports such as EPS licencing, HRA and ES chapters.

However, it is essential for this role that you have a very strong grasp of the evolving developments in biodiversity net gain and are confident using UK Habs. You will need to demonstrate that you can produce BNG assessments as well as on/off-site management plans and associated supporting documents to a very high standard.

Essential (non-technical) skills:

  • Coaching mindset

  • Extremely well organised

  • Incredible attention to detail

  • Ability to prioritise competing demands on your time

  • Sociable

  • Excellent communicator verbally and in writing

Ideally, you will also have achieved:

  • Professional membership of CIEEM/RSB and are working toward chartership

  • CIEEM’s “Accomplished” criteria for Surveying (among others)

  • FISC level 4

The ideal criteria are not all dealbreakers, but certainly give you a flavour of the kind of candidate we’re looking for.

What next?

If this sounds like you, and you want to join the fastest growing company in the sector with unparalleled opportunities and benefits, send your CV and covering letter to dreamteam@arbtech.co.uk.

Note to recruiters!

We welcome applications via recruiters, however (and we cannot stress this enough):

  1. Do not call us.

  2. Use the dreamteam@arbtech.co.uk email address. This is where all applications land and are triaged before being dealt with by the relevant person.

  3. Ensure your introduction email includes information about the candidate’s view on why they think our opportunity overlaps with their skill set and long-term ambitions (this means you will need to talk to your candidate about them and us before you start firing over CVs).

  4. Embellishing someone’s experience will probably crop up in our process, so please don’t put your candidate in that position when you send their CVs across. It’s not fair on them (because they have their time wasted) and it reflects poorly on you, which means we simply won’t use you again.

I’ve applied! What happens next?

Set out below, there are four selection stages in Arbtech’s recruitment process. Before you roll your eyes, this is actually a very, very good thing for both of us. The primary thing we’re looking for beyond meeting the minimum criteria to do the job, is strong cultural fit. This is so that when we bring you into the business, we’re both confident that you’ll be happy here for a very long time, and we can continue to match opportunities with your career aspirations.

Stage 1 – CV, covering letter and competence form (by email)

You can keep your CV fairly brief – one side of A4 is plenty. However, your covering letter is something we’re very interested in. It should tell us about you. There’s no strict format, but the following topics are a great start: what you’re about both in and out of work; what lights your fire; what you don’t like doing; what your long-term ambitions are and how Arbtech aligns with that; and what you think are your strengths and weaknesses. It can be informal or formal. The important thing is to make it interesting!

Interesting cover letters are really useful as we can use them to signpost conversations in the next stage. Finally, the competence form is simple, a one-page document which asks you to break out what you think your technical strengths are, and disciplines that you have experience of but aren’t so confident about.

Unless your covering letter is an absolute catastrophe or littered with typographical mistakes, we’ll probably invite you to talk to us.

Stage 2 – Technical competence interview (in person/video call)

This is normally an informal chat with a technical person at/above your grade. Here we explore what you said in your covering letter as well as in the competence form. We talk about skill gaps and the type of work you’ve done before. It’s also a brilliant opportunity for you to ask questions of someone at Arbtech who has literally been there and done it (and is still doing it)! Don’t waste this. Write a list of questions and make sure you ask them all. There’s no time limit so take as much or as little time as you like.

This is very rarely a pass/fail stage. It’s just for us to see where you’re at, identify CPD/training needs, and assure us both that the post you’re applying for is appropriate for your level of experience and skills.

Stage 3 – Cultural fit interview (in person/video call)

This is a semi-structured discussion about you and Arbtech. It’s also a very good opportunity to ask anything you like (anything means anything) and get straightforward answers from our CEO, Rob. The goal here is not to talk to each other like candidate and interviewer, but as two people trying to see if they get on well, are on the same wavelength, and have aligned goals so that we can move in the same direction for many years to come. It usually lasts anywhere between one and two hours, so make sure you allocate plenty of time and are in a quiet space with a good internet connection. We’re looking to find out what makes you happy and motivated, what you want in the very long-term and how you see yourself getting there. We also talk about the kind of person that thrives at Arbtech and the qualities we’re looking for in candidates, who will eventually become colleagues and friends.

At the end of this interview, we will discuss administrative points like salary and notice periods, etc.

Stage 4 – The live test/proof of work/references (in person/by email)

We will ask you for several recent, relevant examples of your work (and it must be your work exclusively, not a team effort). If they are passable, that’s it, you’re in!

If you don’t have recent examples of your work that are in the public domain/you can’t redact, we will organise a live test. It’s not a trick. We take something that is ostensibly very easy for you and ask you to join one of our consultants on a live paying-client site, to do your own version of whatever we’re doing: a simple PRA bat survey, for example. We ask you to send that back to us in a very tight time frame, so we can get an idea of what you’re capable under your own steam – and then we have our own consultant’s report as a perfect benchmark for comparison. We’re not looking for perfection, just that there’s nothing glaring.

Obviously, it would also be good to have a couple of non-academic references from you, that we can check once you’ve accepted an offer from us.

And that’s it. Hopefully, it’s “welcome to Arbtech” in the comfort of knowing that we are about to embark on a long and happy journey!

Perks? Just a few.

At Arbtech, the perks are REAL.

We don’t mean a branded thermos flask and a few treats in a mini hamper on your first day. We don’t mean a ticket to attend some event the boss fancies going to, or a few drinks occasionally. We don’t mean an annual conference ticket. And we definitely don’t mean playing mini golf.

What we mean, is this:

  1. A culture document that clearly sets out expectations for everyone in the business, so you know that you’re always aligned with the direction we’re headed.

  2. A unique review process that focuses on your contributions to culture and team success.

  3. An annual survey of all employees for things like job satisfaction, singing the praises of other colleagues, highlighting friction points and suggesting solutions – with responses replied to individually and publicly by the CEO.

  4. Structured, objective remuneration and seniority progression that are completely disconnected, so you can pursue either, or both—meaning we always have a track to suit you.

  5. Market leading salaries.

  6. Very generous overtime rates for diurnal and seasonal/nocturnal work.

  7. A relatively flat management structure where thoughtful disagreement is strongly encouraged and seniority is allocated in a matrix style, which we call “Domains”.

  8. A dedicated head of employee development, onboarding co-ordinator, four-person mental health first-aid team, and access to senior management 24/7 for anything you want help with.

  9. A real sense of team.

  10. Complete autonomy over your time and working days/hours. This is the ultimate in flexible working.

  11. No time sheets. Ever.

  12. Tons of opportunity to get involved in other aspects of the business (and even other business, under common ownership), at your discretion.

  13. The most comprehensive medical insurance that we can find, including full cancer care and outpatient cover.

  14. Service awards that top up your company pension contribution by 5% and 10% on your five- and ten-year anniversary with Arbtech.

  15. Christmas bonus of £100 for every year worked at Arbtech. Quite a few of our guys have been here for over a decade. A grand+ in your final pay check of the year doesn’t sound too bad, right?

  16. FORTY days paid holiday.

  17. £500 cash bonus when you take maternity/paternity leave.

  18. A peer-to-peer cash and gifts bonus scheme administered by employees not management. You can literally gift anyone in the business any item from their “wish list” (which is a handful items that range from a tenner to up to several hundred pounds) at any time for any…

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