Ep. 173 - Hiring Seasonal Staff : 3 Ways to Make Your Summer Successful
Choosing your summer seasonal staff well is critical, because these are the people who make summer camp actually happen, and they often decide whether a child begs to come back or dreads the next day. The biggest decision to make is actually simple: hire the personality and teach the skill. In a summer camp setting, kids may only be with you for one week or even one day, so the counselor’s energy, warmth, and ability to handle emotions matter more than perfect technical instruction. Great seasonal staff keep kids safe, make them feel seen, and turn small moments into fun. If you hire someone who only wants to clock in and clock out, you inherit every downstream problem: parent complaints, inconsistent experiences, and preventable safety misses.
A practical staffing strategy starts with recruiting from people who already want to be there. Former campers, current athletes with shifting schedules, siblings of program families, and school teachers looking for a summer job are often stronger summer camp counselor candidates than “anyone available.” When one of your year-round coaches tells you they are not a camp person, believe them. Coaching a consistent group week after week is different from leading a rotating group of kids all day while staying upbeat and vigilant. Interview for temperament: patience, initiative, positive body language, comfort with chaos, and genuine enjoyment of kids. Skills like teaching soccer drills, gymnastics stations, or art projects can be trained, but a chronically low-energy attitude is hard to fix mid-season.
Once you hire well, onboarding and training protect the experience. Seasonal staff onboarding includes the unglamorous requirements: background checks, CPR certification, and any childcare licensing rules required in your state. Those items must be completed before camp starts, and delays are a red flag for future compliance issues like skipping injury logs or forgetting allergy protocols. Beyond paperwork, mandatory pre-camp training meetings align expectations and reduce day-to-day variance between instructors. Use training to rehearse emergency procedures, define communication with parents, and walk through real scenarios. When weather events like tornado warnings hit, a practiced plan keeps kids calm and parents confident.
Strong camps also run on ongoing support, not one-time training. Maintain clear expectations daily: high energy, engaged facial expressions, no leaning on walls, awareness of allergies, constant headcounts, on-time rotations, and immediate injury documentation. A “camp lead” model helps: one floating leader each shift who is not tied to a group, checks every station, handles bathroom runs and minor injuries, and corrects issues in the moment. Overstaffing by one person prevents desperation staffing and gives you options to swap, coach, or send someone home if needed. Daily pre-camp check-ins set the tone, and Monday deserves your best staff because first impressions shape the whole week. When staff feel supported, they return next summer, and your camp becomes more profitable, more consistent, and far more enjoyable for everyone.
