What Makes A Great Application?

Here at Camp America, we don’t have a ‘typical’ application that we expect to receive! We know and appreciate that each and every one of our applicants is an individual and therefore we fully understand that each application will differ.

Having said that, there are fairly basic steps that you can take to ensure that your application is as full and comprehensive as possible:

Number 1: Be mindful over your spelling, grammar and the overall standard of your written English! When your application is received by a Camp America interviewer, they have to make a determination on your suitability for an interview based on the information that you provide within your application. If you write in text shorthand e.g. “i am gr8 at bsketball and luv 2 sk8”, then this doesn’t create the best impression of you. The interviewer may take from this that you haven’t given the application your full time and attention and this may result in them doubting your motivation in applying to the programme.

Number 2: Go into detail when discussing your skills and experience! Okay, so you play football – but do you play with your mates in the park or are you captain of your university team? Did you just take up 5-a-sides at college or have you been playing at youth level since you could walk? Do you just about understand the rules or do you have a coaching qualification from the Football Association? The less you tell us, the harder it is for our interviewers to assess your level of experience. Ultimately, you should look to use up every last character available within the application and leave us in no-doubt as to how qualified you are! This also applies to discussing your child care experience. Telling us that you work at a community centre for children is great – but we want to know what experience you have in working with children. Do you supervise their activities? How old are the children? What are the group sizes? Again, the more you tell us – the easier it is to foresee your placement chances.

Number 3: Tell us why you’ll make a great counsellor! We know that there’re many things that you hope to take from the programme i.e. personal development, cultural experience, new friends etc – but this application is about what YOU can bring to the table. Why is it that you want to be a camp counsellor? What is it about you that is going to positively impact a camp environment? We want to see that you understand what our programme is all about and that you’re willing to contribute, as well as receive.

Number 4: Refine your application! A smiling, happy headshot with a few carefully selected activity photographs can really push your application that extra bit further ahead. Camp Directors want to see you and if you upload a photograph of you in face-paint, wearing a baseball cap with your head tilted to the side or, even worse, if there's more than one person in the picture, it just doesn't have the same effect!

As for activity photographs, if you've written down that you have experience in horse-riding - then do you have any pictures of you on a horse? We want to clearly see that it's you in the pictures so if you play for your university hockey team and are showing a picture of 22 people on a hockey pitch, which one is you? The photographs go a long way to 'back-up' the written part of your application and really help Camp Directors in making their hiring assessments. Making a short video of yourself could push you even further ahead! Introduce yourself, show off your personality and demonstrate all the aspects of your written application on film. Don't tell us that you're the captain of your university basketball team and then show us 2 minutes of footage throwing basketballs at a hoop and failing to score any. Paying a little more time, care and attention to refining your application will go a long way!

As we've documented, everyone is different - but if you follow these principles and guidelines then you should have the ammunition to charge on and fire out of brilliant and comprehensive application.