What do great cabin counselors excel at?

Do You Want to Work at Camp?

Despite what you might think, experience with children is not a prerequisite if you want to work at camp. The only question is whether you have a desire to genuinely help children, because most likely at the end of every day as a camp counselor you will have done just that.

So what skills does a cabin counselor need to excel at? Teamwork, empathy, communication, patience, and most of all — tenacity. You may spend part of your day teaching a sport or activity you’re already good at (we have athletic jobs, watersports jobs, outdoor adventure jobs, creative & performing arts jobs, horseback riding jobs, plus nursing jobs, accounting internships, and other jobs), but the rest of your day is going to be made up by the time between activity periods. There’s always something for you to be doing, and much of it will be new to you. That’s OK. When you work at camp you learn a lot of your job as you go.

A day could go by where you have to use all of the skills listed above, or none of them. Because there’s not a lot of jobs that are like being a counselor, there’s not an expectation you’re going to get it right every time. It’s hard to make decisions in some situations, but the good news is you’ve always got support around you to help you make them. Your co-counselors and your head counselor are going to be there for you. A good camp counselor learns by doing, and by asking for help.

A great counselor is able to adapt on the fly, overcome the randomness that comes along with living in a bunk, and be ready to do it every day. Now that being said, while counselors aren’t going on summer vacation, the job’s rewards are far and away worth the effort.

“Summer Job” doesn’t really do it justice because at camp you get to be part of a community. There’s a saying with some counselors “the weeks fly by but the days are long.” CampGroup camps are the best summer camps to work at in the USA, and they’re excellent camps for college students to work at. If you think you’d like to be a cabin counselor at one of our camps, click the link below and start the process today!