In past blog posts, we’ve talked about how we teach our campers to be role models. One important part of that process is providing campers with great staff role models who can show them what good leadership looks like. And we spend a lot of time working with our staff members to help them, in turn, understand how they can model great behaviors for our campers. We really meant it when we said the learning never stops, even for our directors and leadership staff!

We start off each summer with two weeklong sessions designed just for our staff members, to get them geared up for the season, ready to do their jobs and make camp the best experience possible for our Bryn Mawr Angels. During Leadership Week, our group leaders, program directors and other key staff members spend their days reacquainting themselves with camp, talking about Bryn Mawr philosophies and preparing to welcome a new crop of counselors.

At the end of Leadership Week, we welcome our entire staff — returning counselors as well as new staff members who made it through our rigorous recruiting process — for Staff Week, a special week of camp planned just for our general staff.

We plan Bryn Mawr Staff Week with five goals in mind:

1. Introduce staff to camp: facility, policies, procedures, etc.
2. Make everyone feel welcome and comfortable in their surroundings.
3. Help staff understand what their role is at camp.
4. Prepare for the arrival of campers.
5. Make sure all staff members understand the LBMC camp philosophy.

We believe our Staff Week is one of the most unique counselor orientation programs in summer camping. Lots of camps do a fantastic job of helping their staff members learn rules, traditions and emergency procedures, and while all those important topics are covered during Bryn Mawr’s Staff Week, we strive to make our staff training an experience that immerses counselors in camp life so they really understand what it means to be part of the Bryn Mawr family. We provide information in unconventional ways — for example, instead of just going over uniform rules, our group leaders put on a uniform do’s-and-don’ts fashion show, and instead of explaining what the surprise breakout for an all-camp special event like Color War or Olympics is, we organize a scaled-down special event so counselors can get a taste of camp at its most spirited. We’ve found over the years that these unusual (and entertaining) methods of teaching counselors about camp are extremely effective in helping staff really understand what Bryn Mawr is all about. Our counselors don’t just learn about camp from a handbook or an informational speech, they get to experience it for themselves before the campers ever arrive.

During Staff Week, we give counselors as realistic a camp experience as possible, introducing them to Bryn Mawr traditions and spirit, orienting them to the campus and the daily schedule, and getting them up to speed on rules and policies. Just as important as the nuts and bolts of daily camp life, though, are the sessions on leadership, role modeling and working with girls. Counselors reflect on who they were as children and what they wanted and needed from the adults around them. We talk about what it means to be a leader and a role model and how we can all model positive behaviors for our campers. We give counselors opportunities to practice positive leadership through role play scenarios. We bring in camp guru Bob Ditter to provide in-depth training. We even bring in camp parents to talk to the staff about their hopes and expectations for their daughters. Staff Week is all about understanding camp and understanding the important leadership role of a counselor.

Counselors finish the week excited about camp, ready to meet their campers — and prepared to assume the responsibilities of being great leaders and role models! But the training doesn’t stop once the campers arrive. We continue to provide ongoing leadership training throughout the summer in weekly staff meetings and through one-on-one and small group sessions. Bob Ditter returns to camp later in the summer as well, to check in with the staff and work with individual counselors. From the moment they set foot on campus to the morning they set off for home in August, counselors are learning just as much as campers what it means to be a role model — and passing those lessons on to Bryn Mawr campers.

One of the biggest projects we have to handle is hiring staff members. During the summer, we employ more than 200 staff members. Even with a 40% staff return rate (over 90% for leadership staff), we still need to hire, a handful of leadership staff, counselors and support staff.  An average of three to four staff members are hired each week to make sure all our positions are filled by the time we’re ready to open summer camp.

We thought you might like to know a little bit more about our hiring practices and the process applicants go through on the path to becoming Bryn Mawr staff members:

Application
Over the years, Bryn Mawr has formed strong working relationships with professors and coaches at colleges and universities across the United States. Because of these relationships, we have been able to offer students both the ability to fulfill internships and college credit while working at Bryn Mawr. Most of the counselors who have taken advantage of this opportunity have been studying elementary education, early childhood education, physical education, psychology, social work, kinesiology, sports management, or another major that pertains to working at camp. The partnership that we have made with these schools has allowed us to recruit counselors who have a strong desire to work with children and have dedicated their futures to that goal.

The vast majority of applicants come directly to Bryn Mawr through our website and veteran staff referrals. We have been accepting online applications for more than a decade, and we like knowing that applicants who apply online have had the opportunity to read our in-depth introduction to the life of a camp counselor and learn about Bryn Mawr’s mission and values before they decide we’re the right camp for them.

We receive many hundreds of applications every year, and we screen them to ensure the applicants are qualified potential counselors. About half of these applicants move on to the next step.

Interviews
Applicants with promising applications are contacted for an initial screening interview. This call is a chance for us to learn a little bit more about the applicant, ask any follow-up questions we may have about her application, tell her a few things about camp, and determine whether she could be a good fit for Bryn Mawr. About two-thirds of applicants are then scheduled for a full interview.

Our full staff interviews are conducted in person whenever possible; as we attract applicants from all over the country and the world. Since we’ve already learned quite a bit about the applicant’s background at this point, we spend the full interview getting to know her personality, interests, background and values — the whole person! We extend job offers to about half of the applicants who make it to the full interview — as long as they clear the next step in the process.

Background Checks and References
Each staff applicant is required to provide us with several professional and personal references — former employers, coaches, professors or other adults who can testify to the applicant’s suitability for camp life. All reference checks are completed over the phone and can take over 20 minutes each.  In addition to these references, we conduct a criminal background check and search the United States Department of Justice National Sex Offender database for every applicant to whom we offer a job.

International Staff
By working with a handful of trusted agencies, we love that we are able to hire a small select number of staff members from around the world!  They bring unique perspectives to camp and teach us all new things. (We’ve even had returning campers beg Jane for “a counselor with an accent!”) Assistant Director Britton Bitterman travels overseas with other camp directors to interview potential staff members at camp fairs around England. These trips abroad are great chances for our leadership staff to reconnect with veteran counselors and meet potential employees in person before deciding they’re the right fit for Bryn Mawr.  Of course, that’s a lot to explain when people ask us what we do all year… so we usually just answer, “Oh, you’d be surprised!”