More Ranch Employment Opportunities
Working outdoors isn’t for everyone. Some people just love to be able to walk outside and have the natural environment overwhelm their senses. If you’re one of those people, you may want to work on a dude ranch in one of these jobs.
House Jobs – These jobs are more indoor-oriented. You’ll find yourself working as a cook, as guest relations, front desk, dining room staff, housekeepers, or office staff.
Cooking Staff – When people are on vacation they want to be able to eat well and not have to deal with the cooking and clean up. They also want to eat everything from cereal to buffalo burgers to fine dining. That means that every meal at a dude ranch needs to be prepared, cooked, and cleaned for the guests. And that takes a lot of workers. There are lots of jobs available for all experience levels in the kitchen staff. You may be a gourmet chef, a grill master, a sous chef, a server, or a dishwasher. The pay range is huge. Dishwashers may make $8 an hour, servers $12 an hour, and a chef may make $22 an hour. These jobs include everything from ordering 100 pounds of steak to decorating a pork chop with a nice garnish. These jobs are demanding all day, every day. Anywhere there is cooking and food, there’s always a bit of excitement.
Housekeeping – This may not be the most glamorous job, but you’ll love it every time you walk outside and look at where you work. As a housekeeper, you won’t need much experience. You’ll be doing laundry, cleaning rooms, making beds, dusting, sweeping, cleaning, building fires, gardening, and anything else that needs to be done. It’s a crucial job. You’ll be paid anywhere from $8 to $16 an hour. The job is guest service oriented, so it’s important to have a positive attitude and people skills.
Office Staff – Any business has office work that needs to be taken care of, even dude ranches. Office staff jobs involve answering phones, working front desk, marketing efforts, retail sales, responding to emails, accounting, and payroll. As with any dude ranch job, you’ll be helping out in all aspects of dude ranch life. You may baby-sit or play a game of cards or darts. Office staff needs to be very guest service oriented and have strong communication, organizational, and computer skills. Office experience is a plus, but other dude ranch skills are more important so that you can help out where help is needed. Answering phones, playing checkers with guests, and making between $10 to $20 an hour isn’t bad. This is one of the world’s better office jobs.
These are some of the main jobs available at dude ranches, but don’t limit yourself to these. Different dude ranches need different jobs filled. Some other jobs you’ll find at dude ranches are bartenders, servers, reservation agent, photographer, marketing guru, lifeguard, tennis pro, massage therapist, and the list goes on and on.
Whatever your job you’ll be helping out in all aspects of the dude ranch. Dude ranches are run on the “team” aspect, so if something needs to be done that’s completely out of your job description – just do it. This makes for a fun, friendly atmosphere because people are always helping each other out. You may be front desk help and go play horse shoes with a guest or be a wrangler and help out on the rifle range or work as a housekeeper and sell something in the gift shop. When you work on a dude ranch, you’ll have to be a jack of all trades.