What Makes a Good Staff Member
If I were given a horse for each time someone asks me what job responsibilities I could possibly have in the non-summer months as a summer camp director, we would find the pasture at the Crooked Creek Ranch overrun. Instead, us folks in the TVRC office frequently find our inboxes overrun with staff applications. I spend much of my time in the offseason interviewing and hiring staff members for the upcoming summer. Throughout the seven months we have away from camp, we review hundreds of applications to find the best 100 staff members we can to build our team. Here are some things I like to think about when interviewing potential staff members for a job at TVRC.
The Ideal Team Player
For those of you who spend your spare time reading business management books (hey, there might be one or two of you out there), you may be familiar with Patrick Lencioni’s The Ideal Team Player. This book describes the virtues of team members, regardless of profession or interest, who consistently contribute to their organizations in a positive way.
Our goal each offseason is to assemble the best possible staff from the applicant pool we have. When evaluating staff members in interviews and during summer operations, I often think about whether or not a staff member has the following three qualities:
Hungry - A desire to achieve, grow, learn and do more. Hungry staff members possess the self motivation and dedication to take on more responsibility and achieve high results in their work.
Humble - An awareness and respect for the team being greater than the individual. Humble staff members consistently put others before themselves and work towards the greater mission of their organization.
Smart - An understanding of the inner workings of other people. This does not refer to “intelligence smarts”, but rather “people smarts.” Smart staff members know how to work with other people and create strong relationships with them.
If we can recruit, hire and coach 100+ hungry, humble, and smart staff members in any given hiring season, we will find ourselves primed to have an absolutely legendary summer.
It’s Our Ranch: Making Things Easier for Everyone
At TVRC, we live by the ethos “It’s Our Ranch:” knowing that we are the people that make every in-camp operation happen. Everything from supervising campers to picking up loose items around camp become collective community responsibilities. Many community tasks do not explicitly fall into one person’s job description, and are rather accomplished by those who step up and take said tasks on.
Great TVRC staff members buy into “It’s Our Ranch” by not only seeking out communal tasks and completing them; they also encourage others to join and make the task fun! You might be surprised how wonderful of a friendship you can form with someone you sweep floors and scrub toilets with. Having a staff that consistently thinks about how they can make life easier/better for everyone else leads to an amazing experience for all.
Buying Into the Fun
TVRC celebrates and cultivates fun, joy and humor in all we do to create memories that last. We pour excitement into the mundane to make the ordinary extraordinary. You could simply announce that you are crafting rocks into jewelry in Lapidary, or you could write a sonnet expressing your love for rocks and perform it in the round at the fence, the way Shakespeare intended. Everyone at High School Musical’s East High seems to have a wonderful time singing and dancing throughout their day, regardless of status or station, because EVERYONE is singing and dancing. Great staff members realize that energy and excitement are highly contagious in a summer camp setting. You never know when one moment of fun can make someone’s summer.
The Mission, The Mission, The Mission
The mission of TVRC is “to provide inspiring western adventure in the Jackson Hole and Yellowstone area.” The overwhelming majority of those we provide said adventure to are children. Staff members at TVRC often find themselves grateful to live and work in the beauty of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. They often leave each summer having formed lifelong friendships and core memories. They often gain skills and experiences that benefit them professionally and personally for the rest of their lives. Many of them feel that the summer ‘was the best summer of their lives.’
In spite of all of the personal benefits one can receive in a summer working at TVRC, the greatest staff members realize that TVRC, at its core, is a summer camp for children. By staying focused on the mission of providing an unforgettable camp experience to our campers, staff grow just as much. Staying true to our mission does not take away from a staff member’s personal experience, but rather, enhances it more than they ever could imagine.
If you are interested in applying for a summer position at TVRC, please contact Marshall Cherry at mcherry@tvrcamp.org
