PSA - Staffing is on the docket this week. And if you’re thinking about it too, doing a free 30-minute webinar next week: Ready on Day 1: five staff moves to make this winter. November 19, 3 PM ET. Sign up here.
All right, on to a staff problem
This is a kinda real discussion happening in our Slack channel right now on hiring for this year.
I've got Tyler and Ben (fake names, you get it), and they both want to be a unit leader.
Tyler's awesome. But Tyler is also trying to get an internship in January, and if it comes through, bye-bye. And Ben has already decided that if he doesn't get the position, he's not coming back at all.
So do we hire Ben now, because Ben isn't chasing an internship? Or do we wait on Tyler, knowing that if we wait too long, we lose them both and the whole UL role with it?
The Thanksgiving Cousin Thinks It’s Easy
If you've never done summer camp staffing, it seems simple. Your annoying cousin over Thanksgiving is going to be like, how hard can it be? You just get 18-year-olds, and they show up at camp.
Totally.
Except finding qualified young people who are geeked up to spend their summer at camp is a whole thing before anything else even starts. And then, by some chance if you've found them, the hiring itself is a chess game.
Plus, there are some times when offers have social consequences rippling out to the rest of the squad. Who's friends with who? Who's only coming back if their best friend does?
That's why November matters so much.
Forms, roles, all of it.
We use Campminder to run all of camp.
Two Questions We're Asking
We all want the best people. And the best people usually have the best options. I hate to break it to everyone, but it's not everyone's dream to spend their life working at a summer camp (gasp, I know).
Which means kids like Tyler are out there right now weighing camp against the rest of their lives. And mostly, they're weighing it alone.
One way we’re thinking about this is having more conversations instead of sitting around and waiting for answers. It means asking a couple of specific questions.
What do you want from camp?
What do you want from your career?
The camp answers are great. The career answers are the ones I’m hoping to be able to do something with.
Because if we know what Tyler actually wants in a career, are there ways we can help him get it? Camps are huge networks of people. People who’ve walked through the doors, had an amazing experience and many have gone off and done (or are doing) amazing things.
So maybe Tyler wants to get into finance, or marketing, or whatever it is. There’s a decent chance somebody in the extended camp family is already doing that exact thing. And I love the world where I can call someone and try to make this happen.
A 20-year-old is never going to ask a company to budge on a start date. He just wants the job. Another adult asking on his behalf? That’s a different convo.
Because my guess is that kids like Tyler want both things. They want to come back to camp, but they need to weigh it against their future too.
The Thing I Haven't Solved
This is just one kind of example. I really think, as an industry, we need to be thinking about how camp can act more as a stepping stone to something else instead of maybe the stop-off point (or maybe summertime party indulgence) it’s often seen as.
Not that it shouldn't be those things, but if camp also helps these kids get where they're going, the best ones stick around a lot longer on the way.
The goal is to hang on to those A+ people as long as possible.
Maybe a crazy dream version of this where it's a bench of 3-to-6-week internships starting in May and ending in the middle of June. So we're helping all of our college-age staff get a foot into the "real world" while the summer still pops off with both things.
Do I have a system for this? Nope. But I'm thinking about it more and more the more and more this comes up.
For now? Conversations, one at a time. Or pick 10 staff and text them right now to schedule a time to chat. Find out what their goals are.
Oh, and do you know anyone in commercial real estate looking for an intern? Asking for a friend.
You got this,
Jack
PS - We've got a big announcement coming Monday. Every camp is going to want a look at this one.
