COLORADO SPRINGS — “I love the outdoors. I love hiking and going out spending time.”
College student Brandon Adamson was among close to 200 jobseekers who showed up Tuesday looking for opportunities in Colorado’s outdoor industry.
The event was an outdoor specific job fair put together by the Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation
Alliance (PPORA) and the Pikes Peak Workforce Center.
“We reached out to the workforce center, they were super jazzed about starting an industry focused job fair,” said PPORA Program and Operations Manager, McKenzie Carmack
Adamsom showed up to the outdoor specific event looking for possible ways to merge his love for the outdoors with career goals.
He is interested in GIS, short for Geographic Information Systems.
There were no GIS job openings, but he also got encouraging information by networking with the outdoor industry recruiters.
He said sever told him, “it's incorporated in their own industry. That they use GIS. They know people that use GIS, and they're giving me numbers and other people to talk to.”
Outdoor industry job opportunities are more diverse than many understand.
Along with the business of recreation there are also fields like land management, and conservation.
The non-profit Rocky Mountain Field Institute, which was among recruiters at the event, uses trail engineering skills to build, restore, and maintain trails systems.
Its crews do some work in open space near cities and town.
The group also takes on many projects at sites requiring some serious hiking to access.
“Our summer season is backcountry, so our staff hike out with all their gear, set up camp, work in the backcountry for eight days at a time and then they get six days off in between,” said Otzma Paz who is with the Rocky Mountain Field Institute.
The outdoor industry specific jobs comes out of an assessment and request for feedback from stakeholders in Southern Colorado’s outdoor industry.
Carmack said a top priority noted by industry pros was to “invest more in workforce development to strengthen the outdoor industry here in our region.”
Recent data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows big money year to year coming from the outdoor industry.
“[It} stated that the outdoor industry across the U.S. accounts for $1.1 trillion, which is so hard to wrap your head around, and trickling down to the state of Colorado, that's $13.9 billion,” said Carmack.
The Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance’s mission is to strike a balance between growing business and preserving the outdoor resources that make this type of business possible.
Carmack said, “This is the future of stewards and leaders in the outdoors, you continue to protect these amazing natural resources and recreational opportunities, which continue to drive the economic vitality of the outdoor industry.”
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