How to screen camp counselor applicants when nobody has a resume yet

Every camp hiring guide walks you through the same steps: post the role, collect applications, verify credentials, run a background check, interview. A criminal background check is mandatory for every ACA-accredited camp on top of that routine. That’s the floor, and it’s a real one. It’s also the entire plan in most camp hiring guides, and it was never built to answer the question that actually keeps a camp director up at night in April.

A background check tells you whether someone has a record. It doesn’t tell you whether they can keep their cool when a nine-year-old is sobbing about missing their parents at 9pm on day one, or whether they’ll notice the quiet kid getting left out of a cabin game. Camp hiring advice treats “is this person safe” and “is this person good with kids” as one question with one checklist. They’re not the same question, and screening for one doesn’t screen for the other.

That gap matters more here than almost anywhere else you hire. You’re vetting near-strangers for unsupervised time with other people’s kids, on a deadline that doesn’t move (opening day is opening day), from a pool where most applicants have never had a job that looks anything like this one. It’s the same screening problem every owner-operator without a recruiter runs into, just with the stakes turned all the way up.

The standard camp checklist proves someone is safe, not that they’re good at the job

Ask any camp director what “screening” means and you’ll get the same answer: certifications, references, background check. First aid and CPR cards. A quick call to a past supervisor if there is one. The American Camp Association is direct about the background check piece: a criminal background check is mandatory for every one of the 2,500-plus ACA-accredited camps in the country.

None of that is optional, and none of it should be cut. It’s also not screening for the job. A clean background check means someone hasn’t been convicted of something disqualifying. It says nothing about how they handle a bee sting during free swim, a scheduling fight between two co-counselors, or the fortieth “I want to go home” of the week.

That’s the part camp hiring guides gesture at and then skip. They’ll tell you to “verify employment history” and check for “previous roles involving youth supervision.” For most camp applicants, that instruction doesn’t have much to work with.

Why “verify their history” runs out of runway fast

A camp counselor applicant pool skews young, and a large share are applying for a job with real responsibility for the first time in their life. There isn’t much employment history to verify, because there isn’t much employment history yet. That’s not unique to camps: hourly and entry-level hiring across small businesses runs into the same thin-resume problem, but camps feel it hardest, since the job itself (unsupervised responsibility for kids) is the last one you’d want to fill on a hunch. A first-aid card tells you someone passed a course. It doesn’t tell you how they’ll act the first time they need to use it for real.

The National Recreation and Park Association found that 60% of camp staffing agencies say their biggest hiring challenge is finding qualified candidates who can commit to the full summer, and over a third of agencies don’t start the earnest search until April or May. That’s a few weeks to fill dozens of roles from a pool where the resume tells you almost nothing, using a checklist built to verify a work history most applicants haven’t had time to build.

A background check and a personality read are answering different questions

Here’s the reframe: a background check is the floor. It tells you who to disqualify. It was never designed to tell you who to hire, and expecting it to do that job is where the standard camp checklist quietly breaks down.

The evidence you actually need for the “good with kids” question doesn’t come from a document. It comes from watching how someone responds under a version of the pressure the job actually applies. Ask a candidate to talk through how they’d handle a homesick seven-year-old on the first night, or a conflict between two campers during free time, and you learn more about their judgment in ninety seconds than a reference call usually gives you. Ask them the same question everyone applying for the role answers, and you can compare responses side by side instead of trusting whoever interviewed best that week.

This is the same idea behind a situational judgment test: score someone’s response against how your own team actually wants a real scenario handled, not against a generic “right answer,” because there isn’t one. Talent assessments built for judgment and temperament work the same way. A camp scenario about a scared camper doesn’t have a universal correct response. It has a response that matches how your camp wants staff to show up, and that’s exactly the kind of signal a resume, a certification, or a background check was never built to carry.

The one-way interview objection, answered honestly

The obvious pushback: these are seasonal, entry-level jobs paying camp wages, and a lot of the applicant pool is teenagers. Will they actually sit down and record a video interview for a counselor job?

Some won’t, and that’s worth saying plainly instead of promising otherwise. But a recorded response earns its place exactly on a role like this one: high volume, loosely qualified, no scheduling window to run forty live interviews between now and opening day. Camps that are drowning in more applications than they can phone-screen get more out of one recorded answer to a real scenario than out of a ten-minute call that half the applicants no-show for anyway.

For a role with a genuinely thin pool, like a waterfront director who needs a specific lifeguard certification, the calculation is different. There, you’re trying to meet almost everyone who’s even eligible, and asking them to clear an extra hurdle before you’ll talk to them can cost you a candidate you can’t afford to lose. Skip the video there and lean on the certification check and a live conversation instead. Designing the process yourself, role by role, is also how you figure out who’s actually a fit for a small team instead of applying one generic funnel to every opening. A cabin counselor role pulling 300 applicants and a waterfront director role pulling 6 aren’t the same hiring problem.

What this looks like across one hiring season

Picture a camp with 45 seasonal roles to fill by June, and 300-plus applications landing between March and May, most from first- or second-summer counselors with thin resumes and a first-aid card. Reading every application by hand, then trying to phone-screen the ones that look decent, eats the exact weeks a camp director needs for facilities, programming, and parent communication.

Truffle is a candidate screening platform that combines resume screening, one-way video interviews, and talent assessments, so you can build a process that fits a role like this instead of running everyone through the same generic funnel. Resume screening clears the obvious gaps fast: age minimums, availability for the full season, required certifications listed. For the counselor and activity roles pulling the bulk of the volume, a one-way interview with two or three scenario questions (the homesick camper, the co-counselor disagreement, the “how do you keep 10 eight-year-olds engaged for an hour” question) gives you a recorded, comparable answer from every applicant instead of a live interview you don’t have time to schedule 300 times. A situational judgment assessment can go a layer deeper on judgment and temperament for the roles where that matters most.

None of that replaces the background check. It’s worth being exact here: Truffle doesn’t run criminal background checks, and that stays your responsibility through a dedicated background check vendor, same as ACA accreditation requires. What Truffle does is narrow 300 applicants down to a short, ranked list with the reasoning attached, so the background check and the reference calls (the expensive, per-candidate steps) only happen for the people worth spending that money and time on. AI surfaces the match scores and the evidence behind them. You’re still the one deciding who’s actually right for a cabin full of kids. Seasonal hiring like this doesn’t need a year-round contract to justify it either, which is the same argument for screening software on any hiring calendar that isn’t constant; most plans start around $49 a month and scale with how many roles you’re actually filling, so a spring hiring push doesn’t have to become a twelve-month commitment. See the pricing for the full breakdown.

The floor and the signal aren’t the same line

Every camp hiring guide is really a compliance checklist wearing a hiring-advice costume, and that’s not a criticism. Compliance is exactly what a background check and a certification file are for, and skipping either isn’t a shortcut worth taking.

But a director who treats that checklist as their whole screening process is answering “is this person safe to be near kids” and calling it done, when the actual hire depends on a second question the checklist was never built to answer. The camps that get this right aren’t the ones with the longest compliance file. They’re the ones that built a second, separate process for the judgment question, and stopped expecting a background check to do double duty.

Frequently asked questions about screening camp counselor applicants

Does a background check tell you if someone will be a good counselor?

No. A background check tells you whether someone has a disqualifying record. It’s mandatory for ACA-accredited camps and it’s not optional, but it wasn’t designed to measure communication, patience, or judgment under pressure. Those need a different kind of evidence, like a recorded response to a real scenario or a structured assessment.

How do you screen camp counselor applicants who don’t have relevant work experience?

Lean less on employment history and more on how someone responds to a scenario close to the actual job: a homesick camper, a scheduling conflict, keeping a group of kids engaged. A short recorded answer or a situational judgment question tells you more about fit than a thin resume can, especially for applicants on their first or second summer job.

Should every camp role go through a one-way video interview?

Not necessarily. It earns its place on high-volume roles like general counselor positions, where you’re choosing among a large, loosely qualified pool and can’t phone-screen everyone. For a thin-pool role, like a certified waterfront director, skip the extra step and go straight to a live conversation so you don’t lose a candidate you can’t afford to lose over an added hurdle.

What’s the difference between a background check and a screening tool like Truffle?

A background check verifies someone’s criminal history through a dedicated vendor. That part doesn’t change. Truffle handles what happens around it: resume screening, one-way video interviews, and talent assessments that help you rank applicants and see who’s worth moving to a background check and a live interview in the first place. It’s not a replacement for the background check. It’s the part of the process that decides who gets one.

When should camps start screening for summer staff?

Earlier than most do. Industry data shows over a third of camp staffing agencies don’t start the earnest search until April or May, which leaves only a few weeks to fill dozens of roles before opening day. Starting the applicant pipeline and screening process in late winter gives you room to actually compare candidates instead of hiring whoever’s left standing in late May.