At Tall Pines we are proud of our staff. We strive to create a positive work atmosphere where our staff wishes to return year after year. The national average return rate for day camps is 50 percent. At Tall Pines the rate is 90 percent! Each summer we employ approximately 350 staff members. The most common question we receive is, “Where do you get your staff?” To which we reply, “We grow our own.”
Here are some amazing statistics:
90% of our 150 Senior & Junior Counselors that work in the bunks are former campers.
90% of our staff returns each year. The national average is 50%.
Over 50% of our staff are our former campers.
10% of our staff has been here for 15+ years.
33% of our staff has been here for 10+ years.
Preference is given to former campers due to loyalty and knowledge of our camp culture.
Senior Counselors
There are 50 Senior Counselor positions.
In the last five years we have more returning Seniors Counselors than available positions!
40 out of 50 are former campers.
Average age is 26 and they have an average of 9 years of experience at Tall Pines.
A Senior Counselor leads each group, or “bunk”, with assistance from two Junior Counselors.
Senior Counselors are required to have finished their freshman year of college.
Fifty percent of our Senior Counselors are state certified teachers.
Twenty-five percent are college education majors and the remaining twenty-five percent are typically long term staff members that have grown up at Tall Pines.
Junior Counselors
All of our Junior Counselors (100) are returning staff members or graduates of our Counselor-In-Training Program.
95 out of 100 JCs are former campers.
The average JC has 8 years of experience at Tall Pines.
Junior Counselors range in age from 15 to 18 and there are two for each bunk.
Staff Hiring and Screening Processes
All employees, without exception, are carefully screened by every acceptable method available to us despite the fact that most of them have grown up at Tall Pines.
Each staff member is subject to the following:
A face-to-face interview.
Voluntary Disclosure statements are on each application and contract.
Annual criminal background check for all staff over 18.
Annual check in the National Sex Offender Registry Database.
Our insurance company checks a driver’s Motor Vehicle Record (MVR) for a 3 yr. period.
We check three professional/personal references and work histories.
New staff is checked in the AM Skier Staffer Index. If a staff member worked at one of the 400 camps insured by AM Skier than their name would be listed in this index.
Each year the NJ MVC checks our van drivers’ licenses in their database.