|
Article Excerpt
What makes our camps great? Getting the right people on the bus, in the right seat, and keeping them there (Collins 2001). Staffing is the most important thing we do. As a camp director, I wear many hats--fundraiser, cook, public speaker, toilet plunger, standards visitor, community representative, and even mechanic. Ok, so I am not really a mechanic; in fact, our facilities manager won't even let me near the tools if he can help it, but the rest is true. Of all the jobs I have, the most important thing that I do is staffing. Recruiting, training, and keeping the kind of staff that will take your organization forward is not pure chance--it is hard work, and it starts with you.
Who Are You?
Before we can talk about recruiting, training, and keeping staff, we need to talk about who we are. What kind of staff do you want? Then that's who you need to be. I want my staff to be silly, get in front of campers and make fools of themselves, so that's who I am. You attract who you are. Scary, but true. John Maxwell calls that the Law of Magnetism (Maxwell 1998). When you recruit, train, and lead staff, they are taking their lead from you--not in what you say, but in what you do.
The Role Model Principle: People listen more to what you do than what you say. In everything we do, we need to reflect back to the role model principle.
Recruiting
The best way to build a good team is to hire good people. Sounds simple enough, but it means being very picky about your staff. I have never regretted not hiring someone. That may sound cold, but it's true. On the other hand, when I have settled for a staff person, it has very seldom worked out to be the best for the staff person, for camp, or for the campers. Don't skip over the part where I said it did not work out best for the staff person. If your camp is not the right fit, you are doing a disservice to that person by hiring him or her. From full-time staff to seasonal staff, we need to make sure that we are recruiting people that fit our mission, our goals, our camp culture.
How Do You Recruit?
I hope that the answer to this is different every year. It is for me. There are lots of avenues to recruiting--online, job fairs, former campers, and of course, training our returning staff to recruit.
Job Fairs
I do not attend many summer camp job fairs anymore, but when I do it amazes me when I...
|
