Worried about hiring camp staff? You’re not alone
What are you most concerned about for the 2019 season?
The challenges in finding and hiring new staff members for camps around the country included 5 key areas:
- Youngness of staff – how do you deal with and train younger employees to deal with campers in 2019?
- Training staff who arrive late – schedules are always a challenge, can you train counselors with a compressed timeline?
- Having enough staff – Never! Most camps find themselves to be understaffed, with administrators needing to pitch in and counselors expanding their duty.
- New leadership staff – As hard as it is to find the right people, the other challenge with adding new leadership is setting them up for success by training them in your camp DNA
- Nurses – Injuries, food and seasonal allergies and other medical issues are always a challenge and 2019 is no different.
- So it looks like you’re worried about staff! Here are 5 places you can go to help you with your staffing needs:
Summer Camp Counselors and Leaders Facebook group has more than 1,400 members and camps are welcome to post jobs once a month - Canadian Camp Jobs – Similar to Camp Counselors, but focused on Canadian Summer Camp Jobs it’s for both Canadian Camps to post openings, announcements that they are hiring and for Seekers of a position at a camp.
- Camp Jobs, run by the same team as the Canadian Group also allows camps to post openings and those looking for summer employment to post their availability
- Summer Camp Professionals – Created in 2010, this group can help fill full time, year-round positions only and welcomes vendors as well as camps themselves to take part in the community!
- CampStaff Serves both camp staff and summer camps, with a one-stop shop that includes staff applications, profile pages and job listings for camps and more to help fill summer jobs.
Talking up the benefits is one of the best ways to convince someone that a summer camp staff position is extremely beneficial. Associate Director of Camp Ramaquois, Matthew Kaufman, says “More and more, we have to convince applicants that working at camp is the world’s best internship. A summer at camp teaches staff members to take initiative, cultivate leadership skills, work as part of a team, and develop communication skills.”
For the optimistic side of things, we asked “What are you most excited about for the 2019 season?” We received a lot of comments with exclamation marks so people must be very excited!!!
- Everything!
- The kids!
- The staff
- Seeing campers and staff build relationships
- New programs and spaces!
Where do you think your enrollment will fall for this summer?
It seems like it’s going to be a pretty good year for enrollment with nearly 40% saying they expect higher than average enrollment and another 57% saying they expect about average. Only a few respondents were concerned about enrollment being lower.
More Information on Campium’s Camp Management Software
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