Seeking Work that Meets Your Needs Means Bypassing Jobs Perfect for Someone Else

For some, it is money. You may need wages to make your RV payment, pay for insurance, and buy the things you need for day-to-day living -- as well as enough to save for your retirement.

Others are seeking work to enable them to stay in a choice location. Maybe it is to have an extended time in a state park, one where they enforce a 14-day limit. Working there, even on a volunteer basis, allows you to stay the entire season.

It may mean that you'd get to stay in a luxurious, high-end resort that you otherwise wouldn't. Maybe you couldn't afford those rates. I look at the rates some resorts advertise and I can't imagine paying that much for an RV site. Perhaps it isn't something you would do, either, but you may be willing to work there in exchange for a site and use of all the amenities the facility offers.

For retired workers, the reasons for seeking a position may be completely different. You may want to give back to society. Perhaps you've never had the time to do the volunteer work that you've wanted to do. A work camping job may allow you to do that. It could also be that you've always done a lot of volunteering, only now, as a full-time RVer, you are volunteering at a national wildlife preserve instead of leading a Boy Scout troop.The range of ads we receive, and the work available for RVers, covers a wide gambit.

Some pay top wages, plus travel expense to your new location, plus housing. Travel nurse jobs are one example of this. Contracts for those doing short-term highly technical assignments are another.

Some positions put you in a particular environment, such as a fishing village or working with an historical re-enactment. Others may make it feasible for you to spend a summer in Alaska or a winter in the Florida Keys.

Invariably, when we post ads that require RVers to work 20 or more hours a week for a site, I hear from irate RVers who think that is too much to ask. When ads request 40 hours of work a week for a site (and there have been some for even more than that), the emails to me really heat up. My initial response is that, yes, it is too many hours to work for a site. But, then, those positions fill, which tells me the work campers who took them are looking for something different from their work that what I am looking for.

If those offers didn't appeal to at least some RVers -- and meet their needs -- then they would go unfilled and the offers would change. Work camping at campgrounds is one of the few jobs where there is a true supply and demand.

So, what position is right for you? It depends on why you are seeking work -- what you want from the job.

If some jobs don't match up with your reasons for seeking work, keep looking. Those offers you think are outrageous are exactly the ones someone else is hoping to find.



Go to the Working RV Basics section for more articles about getting started as a working RVer.

Go from this article on seeking work to the Workers On Wheels Work for RVers and Campers blog.