Summer Camp Counselor Skills Can Help You Get a Job
Helpful Summer Camp Counselor Skills
Many employers are impressed with people who have experience as summer camp counselors. If you are a summer camp counselor, you will develop good communication skills. You will need to be able to communicate with children, their parents, your peers, and your supervisors. This experience means a lot to many prospective employers.
When you work at a summer camp you will identify as a lifelong learner, a skill that will serve you well in future jobs. As a summer camp counselor, it is your responsibility to learn all about your campers, and you learn much more about yourself in the process, too. The best counselors develop a real “I want to learn more” work ethic. Camp counselors are adept at being self-starters. You will have very good supervision, but no one holds your hand.
Counselors learn very quickly that their campers view them as the go-to expert for a variety of needs. You will be a quick thinker and a quick learner, two very desirable skills for future work situations.
Resilience is another valuable skill you will pick up as a counselor at a sleepaway camp. You will learn to handle all kinds of situations you never imagined. From intervening in camper arguments to soothing homesickness, from learning to laugh at little kid jokes that just aren’t funny, to making a fool of yourself to get a kid to laugh, you will learn to shift gears smoothly, on the fly, go to bed exhausted and be excited about getting up the next morning to do it all over again.
As organized as camps can be, schedules can fall apart for any number of reasons. Campers can have wildly unpredictable behaviors that require intervention. For a variety of reasons, you will learn to be a problem solver, and this will serve you well in future jobs and for the rest of your life.
Another skill you will develop as a camp counselor that will serve you well in your future career is the art of creative thinking: your campers will look to you, expecting to have more fun than they ever have before, and you have to deliver. Dig deep within yourself, partner with your peers, engage your kids to figure it out and you will find out that not only are they having a blast, you are, too! This is great preparation for learning to engage your peers in a professional setting.
Prospective employers will also be impressed by the experience you’ve developed as a detail-oriented worker. Managing one kid requires attention to a plethora of details; managing a cabin of kids requires a level of attention to detail that will you serve you well in your future management endeavors!
When you are asked about how you work as part of a team, your camp counselor experience will serve you uniquely well, because counselors are both leaders and team players. You are the biggest role model for your campers. They watch your every move. They look to you. But camp counselors are quick to learn that they can’t do everything on their own and that the best results come from a team effort. A team of counselors working together toward the same goal makes the experience more fun for the campers and more rewarding for you. Learning how to support and depend on your peers is invaluable to your future success.
You will develop a strong work ethic as a camp counselor. Your experience working 24 hours a day for 3 months with very little time off and a smile on your face the entire time is no small feat. Anyone who can pull that off is a great asset to any future employer who values people with genuinely committed can-do attitudes.
Having sleepaway summer camp counselor on your resume isn’t just a great conversation starter, it is proof that you have developed some incredibly valuable and translatable skills for the broader workplace.
Catalina Island Camps Counselors
Looking for a summer camp counselor job? Catalina Island Camps encourages you to look into working with us! Get your job FAQs answered or apply to be a camp counselor today.