River Jobs at Ouzel Outfitters

General Information

Ouzel is primarily a multi-day river company but also runs extensive day trip programs on three of our rivers. Most potential guides start with little or no experience and all go through our training program. Applicants with previous professional guiding experience are still required to attend new guide training. After making it through training, 1st year guides will “swamp” local day trips while learning our systems and the different rivers we run. Once a guide has been checked off on a stretch of river, they will become a paid working guide for that section. As the season progresses, 1st year guides showing dedication and aptitude may have the opportunity to train in our multi-day program during their first year but typically that does not occur until their second season.

Swamping

Check Off Runs

Once a guide feels comfortable with a given section of river, they can request to be checked off. Since the guide is running the raft, this day is paid. A check off requires you to “run” the day, with an experienced guide riding along. The experienced guide is not there to assist, but to observe. If the experienced guide feels you are capable at the end of the trip to run that section, he or she will “check” you off and you will become a working, paid guide for that section.

Certification Requirements

Working guides are required to have current Wilderness First Aid (WFA) and CPR Certificates, as well as an Oregon Food Handlers card. Guides who have a Wilderness First Responder (WFR) certificate or greater receive an upgrade in their pay rate. Swiftwater Rescue certificates are not required but encouraged and also receive a pay upgrade. First aid courses are not required for training or swamping, but will be required for you to be a working paid guide.

Guest Service

We know that our guides are our biggest asset and are the ones responsible for delivering our guests the high-quality river trips that they have come to expect. Our four guiding principles at Ouzel are safety, customer service, trip quality and efficiency. We pride ourselves on our safety record and know that training and teamwork are the keys to delivering a safe river trip. We expect our guides to uphold the highest safety standards above all else. Customer service is what we are famous for; our guides love people and treat our guests with respect, always doing their best to fulfill our guest’s requests and to make them comfortable in what can sometimes be a challenging environment. Our guides are also constantly looking for ways to make our trips better than they already are. While it is hard to improve on our trips, no one knows better than the guides what can be accomplished and we rely on them to always be looking for ways to make our guests experiences even better. If you are a person with the above characteristics, have a positive attitude, are interested in a job that you can come back to again and again, then you are the kind of guide we are looking for.

Our goal is to schedule guides as far as possible so that guides know when and where they will be working. In practice however, that is extremely difficult to accomplish. By late May, our top 6 or 8 guides have an idea of their rough schedule because most of our multi-day trips have at least enough bookings to make the trips go and we can start assigning guides to them. Not knowing how bookings will continue however, we can only guess about what trips the rest of the staff will be working. In early June, as day trips start coming in and the multi-day trips continue to fill, we start to add guides to the multi-days throughout the season and can start to assign rough schedules for the following week on day trips. As the season continues to get busier and busier, more and more guides are added to the multi-days and schedules become slightly more predictable for most of the staff. As you might have gathered, that leaves first year guides filling in the holes in the schedule anywhere from 2 or 3 weeks to one hour before the trips start. If asked, most of our newer guides would say that they were not optimistic about the amount of work they would receive during their first season. When asked at the end of the season, however, most were very happy with the schedules and amount of work they ended up with. 

Ouzel is primarily a seniority-based company. This means the longer you have been with the company, the more priority you have for scheduling. We cultivate a atmosphere of continuous training, creating a natural progression which creates opportunities for newer guides to work longer and more difficult trips. Our guide staff is experienced and loyal with most returning to work for us each year.  When you combine the natural progression of skills with a relatively low turnover rate, it is easy (and preferable) for us to fill the positions of departing guides from within. Our mid-level guides have earned their positions as well as the right to move up. We would not be able to maintain the loyalty of our staff if we filled our vacant and most sought after positions with previously experienced guides who were new to Ouzel. This can be difficult for previously experienced first and second-year guides who may find themselves with a lighter schedule than those who have been with the company for a longer duration. You have to be patient because, no matter how experienced you are, you will be hired into a staff that has an existing hierarchy and who Ouzel is committed to keeping; it may take a few seasons to get on the crew or to get the schedule that you really want. 

Location

It is not as important that you plan to live in Central Oregon for your first season with Ouzel, however, most of the trips and the training opportunities that can fill in your schedule begin and end in Bend and living out of the area will reduce those opportunities tremendously. Ouzel does not supply local housing for guides in Bend (and we do not allow camping at the warehouse), but housing is provided at our satellite locations on the Rogue, Salmon, and the Owyhee.

Experienced Applicants

Despite having previous experience, your boating skills and conservative judgment will be closely scrutinized during training and your early work experiences. Every company has different attitudes concerning safety and guide behavior and the speed at which you pick up and adjust to these differences will directly affect which trips and how much work you get. As mentioned before, you need to not only to have the physical ability, but the customer service and inter-personal skills to run a stretch safely before you are assigned to work it.