These Are the Staff You NEED at Your Camp - CampHacker #153

No more warm-body syndrome. Hire great staff and have a great summer.

This isn’t the first Go Camp Pro Podcast about staffing, and it certainly won’t be the last.

This year all of our shows are going to cover many topics on staffing - where to find them, how to interview them, how to keep them, etc.

But when you get down to it, we need to take a step back from the current staffing crisis and remember that if we hire the absolute best staff team we can, it is more likely to make the absolute best experience for the campers.

This episode, Gabz, Chris and Joe pick apart the DNA of what makes an incredible camp staff member and why it’s important that you are relentless in your pursuit of looking for those qualities at hiring time.

Do you read the show notes? Let us know - click the following link to receive 10% off a lifetime subscription of Go Camp Pro's 5-Minute Fridays. (psst. Even if you don't buy anything, clicking this link will still help!)
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Tool of the Week – Make Yourself a Better Camp Director

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Wouldn’t it be refreshing if your registration software gave you MORE time? With UltraCamp, you can track attendance, manage staff applications, streamline registration, and much more. Get back the time you need to focus on what is really important: CAMP! Find out more at summercampsoftware.com/camphacker

...And This Is What We Need To Do About It - with Jolly Corley & Ruby Compton - CampHacker #152

Part 2 of our conversation about the big changes needed in the Camp World.

To listen to part 1: https://camphacker.tv/podcast/2021/10/future-of-camp-pt-1

Last episode, we gave a laundry list of what’s NOT going well in the industry.

Here, we shake off the doom and gloom start to unpack what it might look like to fix some of these changes that seem big and foreboding.

A big thanks to Ruby and Jolly for joining us for these two episodes! Make sure you check out all of the great things that they are up to: https://rubyoutdoors.com & https://gocamp.pro/jolly

Do you read the show notes? Let us know - click the following link to receive 10% off a lifetime subscription of Go Camp Pro's 5-Minute Fridays. (psst. Even if you don't buy anything, clicking this link will still help!)
(click here - https://bit.ly/pod-notes-discount)

Tool of the Week – Make Yourself a Better Camp Director

Your Hosts:

Thanks to our sponsor!

UltraCamp

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if your registration software gave you MORE time? With UltraCamp, you can track attendance, manage staff applications, streamline registration, and much more. Get back the time you need to focus on what is really important: CAMP! Find out more at summercampsoftware.com/camphacker

We Are S*it Scared About The Future of Summer Camp with Jolly Corley & Ruby Compton - CampHacker #151

Yes - S*it scared.

As Ruby points out in this episode, the CampHacker team doesn’t shy away from saying the hard things.

Episode 39 of the Podcast, recorded in 2012 talked all about why the camp industry was in peril.

Switch those last two numbers and fast-forward to 2021, and we’re STILL in many of those same perils.

Like many industries, the pandemic has further amplified the things about camp that need to change. The ideas of “lack of staff”, a homogeneous industry community, climate change and many more things seem to have come to a head all at once.

Look at the summer camp professionals group on Facebook, it was FULL of stories from pros, young and old, speaking about how this was their hardest summer yet.

In this episode, the brilliant Ruby Compton and Jolly Corley, join Travis, Chris and Joe to honour the hard things that we’re facing.

NEXT episode we’ll talk about how to move forward!

Do you read the show notes? Let us know - click the following link to receive 10% off a lifetime subscription of Go Camp Pro's 5-Minute Fridays. (psst. Even if you don't buy anything, clicking this link will still help!)
(click here - https://bit.ly/pod-notes-discount)

Tool of the Week – Make Yourself a Better Camp Director

Your Hosts:

Thanks to our sponsor!

UltraCamp

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if your registration software gave you MORE time? With UltraCamp, you can track attendance, manage staff applications, streamline registration, and much more. Get back the time you need to focus on what is really important: CAMP! Find out more at summercampsoftware.com/camphacker

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Does the Camp Industry Need a Union? - with Alana Matteson - CampHacker #150

How might (or might not) a union help serve Camp Pros as they navigate an increasingly stressful profession?

At the end of August, a particularly thought-provoking post was made in the Summer Camp Professionals Facebook group.

After hearing about some of the horror stories of this, and past summers, a pro posted this:

“…Its become clear to me in the last few months that the people in charge of camps are often not the people that run summer camps and this can lead to some wild expectations including around hours, pay, vacation time, parental leave, etc. because the ACA hasn’t put these things in the standards, I’m wondering if having some sort of body to educate people on best practices around expectations for staff would be helpful.”

That pro, was Alana Matteson, and she is our guest this episode to kick off our
new season of both Camp Code and the CampHacker Podcast!

Alana joins Travis and Ruby for this discussion on not just Unions, but the type of advocacy that pros need in general to have more successful, fulfilling and sustainable careers.

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What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

Tool of the Week – Make Yourself a Better Camp Director

Travis: WorkSharp

Ruby: Personal Recipe Book

Alana: Power Beats High-Performance Earbuds

Your Hosts:

Thanks to our sponsor!

UltraCamp

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if your registration software gave you MORE time? With UltraCamp, you can track attendance, manage staff applications, streamline registration, and much more. Get back the time you need to focus on what is really important: CAMP! Find out more at summercampsoftware.com/camphacker