If you are reading this in the middle of hiring season, you already know: recruiting camp staff is a lot. Between tracking down counselors, coordinating nursing candidates, vetting chefs, and chasing down references, it can feel like you are holding the whole thing together with spreadsheets and sheer willpower.

That is not a criticism. The camp industry has always been a place that runs on relationships, resourcefulness, and people who genuinely care. But when it comes to recruiting technology, we have been an underserved market. The tools that other industries take for granted, the ones that help retailers like Amazon, Target, and Macy's hire hundreds of thousands of seasonal workers every fall, have not made their way into most camp hiring offices. There is no single, purpose-built solution for camp. So we have all been piecing it together.

At CampHire, we recruit nurses, chefs, and counselors for camps across the United States, sourcing thousands of candidates each season. Over the years, we have made it our business to study how high-volume seasonal employers in other industries approach hiring and to figure out which tools translate to camp. What follows is our honest take on the five platforms that have earned a permanent place in our stack. We have used all of them across multiple hiring seasons. We know what works, what needs some setup, and where the rough edges are.

We are sharing these because we genuinely think they will make your life easier. Once you have this infrastructure in place, you can roll it out each season and hit the ground running. The goal is to work smarter, not harder, and these tools make that possible even for small teams.

The five tools we recommend. Read on for the full breakdown of each, including pricing, what we love, and what else we tried. JazzHR (applicant tracking) Calendly (interview scheduling) StoryPrompt (candidate video introductions) Indeed (candidate sourcing) Otter.ai (interview recording and notes).

One thing worth noting up front: according to industry estimates, summer camps collectively employ around 1.5 million staff across the United States each year. That is a hiring challenge that rivals some of the biggest seasonal employers in the country. Amazon plans to hire 250,000 people for the holiday season. Target brought on 100,000. The retail industry collectively hires around 500,000 temporary workers each fall. These companies invest heavily in recruiting infrastructure because they have to. Camp is no different in scale, yet most of us are still working without the tools those industries use as table stakes.

Best Applicant Tracking System: JazzHR

Our verdict: The most approachable, fully featured applicant tracking system (ATS) for high-volume camp recruiting at a price that actually makes sense.

Before anything else, you need a place to put everyone. A dedicated ATS is the foundation of a functional recruiting operation, and without one, everything downstream gets harder.

JazzHR complements your camp management software rather than replacing it. Think of your ATS as the tool that finds, evaluates, and moves candidates through the process, while your camp management platform takes over once someone is hired.

JazzHR is our top pick for camps of almost any size. We have used it across multiple hiring seasons, and the reasons we keep coming back are consistent.

What We Love

• Fast to learn. Your program director or health director can sit down and figure it out without a training session. That matters when you are onboarding a hiring team mid-season.
• Built-in texting. Candidates apply on their phones and respond to texts faster than email. JazzHR's native SMS means every message is logged on the candidate's profile, visible to your whole team.
• Job syndication. Post once and it pushes to Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and dozens of other boards. Every applicant funnels back into one place. No more managing five separate inboxes mid-season.
• Unlimited users. We have had 20-plus people in the system during peak season, from recruiters to department heads, all on one plan. Most ATS platforms charge per seat. JazzHR does not.
• Careers page included. JazzHR auto-generates a clean job listing page for your camp. For many camps that do not have one, this is a quick employer brand upgrade.

Pricing JazzHR's Hero plan starts at $75/month (billed annually) or $99/month on a month-to-month basis. You can flex up or down as your season requires, which is how we use it. See current pricing at jazzhr.com/pricing. Note that the candidate texting feature we rely on is an add-on at $39/month, so factor that in when budgeting.

The Watch-outs

JazzHR is a recruiting tool, not a full HR management system. It will not handle onboarding paperwork or payroll. For camp, that is actually a feature: you want a tool purpose-built for finding and hiring people, and you can move records to your camp management software once someone is hired. Just know that JazzHR is one part of a stack, not the whole thing.

What Else We Tried

We have tested Recruit CRM, ADP, and Taleo, among others. These are capable platforms with strong feature sets, and they serve large organizations with dedicated HR departments well. For camp, they are more than what you need and harder to set up and learn. The added complexity of enterprise HR management tools, performance reviews, payroll integration, compliance dashboards, does not add value to a seasonal recruiting operation. JazzHR keeps the focus on what camps actually need: getting the right people into seats efficiently.

Best Scheduling Tool: Calendly

Our verdict: The only scheduling platform with the team routing, round-robin, and ghosting-reduction features that camp hiring demands at scale.

Going back and forth over email to find interview times is a productivity leak. It costs you time, it slows down the candidate experience, and at volume it simply does not hold up. If you are interviewing hundreds of candidates across a season, you need the scheduling to run itself.

Most people know Calendly as a simple personal scheduling link. What unlocks its real value for camp is the Teams plan, which opens up a set of features purpose-built for coordinating multiple interviewers and managing high volumes of bookings.

A note on Calendly's direction: in 2022, Calendly acquired Prelude, a scheduling automation tool built specifically for recruiting. It was their first acquisition, and it signals clearly where they are headed. The features born from that integration have been rolling out steadily, and we expect the product to keep improving for talent acquisition use cases. You can read more about that move in this TechCrunch piece.

What We Love

• Round-robin scheduling. We load all our hiring managers into one event and send candidates a single link. They see everyone's combined availability, book a time that works, and it routes to whoever is free. Any number of interviewers can be in the pool.
• Role-based routing. Candidates answer which role they applied for during booking. Nurse applicants go straight to the health director. Counselor applicants go to the counselor lead. No one ends up in front of the wrong interviewer.
• Reconfirmation prompts. Twenty-four hours before an interview, Calendly asks candidates to actively click a button confirming they are showing up. We can see at a glance who has confirmed and who has not. This has made a real dent in ghosting.

Pricing Free for individual users. The Teams plan, which is the tier that unlocks round-robin, routing, and advanced workflows, is $16 per seat per month. We add users during peak hiring season (January through June) and scale back down afterward to manage costs. See current pricing at calendly.com/pricing.

The Watch-outs

At $16 per seat, a larger team adds up. The setup for round-robin and routing workflows has a real learning curve too. It takes an afternoon of focused work to configure correctly. Once it is running, it genuinely hums on its own, but getting there requires someone comfortable enough with the platform to set things up intentionally.

What Else We Tried

Cal.com is a solid, lower-cost alternative with a growing feature set, though it does not yet match the depth of Calendly's team scheduling and workflow automation. Google Calendar's native scheduling feature is useful for individual booking but is not built for team routing or multi-interviewer coordination. For camp hiring at any meaningful volume, neither is a substitute for the Teams plan.

Best Candidate Video Tool: StoryPrompt

Our verdict: A no-login, phone-native way to collect 90-second video introductions from candidates that tell you far more than a resume ever could.

Here is something true about camp hiring that does not apply in most industries: the resume barely matters. When you are hiring an 18-year-old to be a cabin counselor, their GPA and part-time job history tell you almost nothing about whether they are going to be energetic, warm, creative, and great with a group of 10-year-olds. What you actually need to see is harder to put on paper.

This is why we started building a video component into our application process, not as a formal interview, but as a low-stakes, optional snapshot. The goal is simple: let candidates show you a little of who they are before you commit to scheduling a call.

StoryPrompt was actually designed for collecting customer testimonials, a tool for brands to build a wall of video love from their community. We found it and recognized that its core mechanics were perfect for what we needed. We have effectively adapted it for camp recruiting, and it has become one of our favorite parts of the process.

What We Love

• Zero barriers for candidates. They click a link, record on their phone, and submit. No app, no account, no verification. For the age group we are hiring, every extra step loses people. This has almost none.
• The signal is real. A video tells you things a resume from a 19-year-old never will. Can they make you smile? Do they light up talking about the outdoors? Can they hold a cabin's attention? Some candidates just come alive on camera.
• High uptake when you frame it right. We send every applicant a message saying we almost always give interviews to candidates who send a video. Most take us up on it, and they are almost always the ones we want to talk to.
• Lives in JazzHR. We save each video link directly to the candidate's profile so the whole team can pull it up without leaving the ATS.

Pricing StoryPrompt has a free plan. Paid plans start at $49/month. See current options at storyprompt.com/pricing. Like our other tools, we scale up during hiring season and downgrade afterward.

The Watch-outs

StoryPrompt was not built for recruiting, so the organizational tools inside the platform are relatively basic. We work around this by saving video links directly to candidate profiles in JazzHR. It requires a bit of manual upkeep, but it is not a heavy lift once it is part of the routine.

What Else We Tried

We tested HireVue and SparkHire, which are both well-regarded video interview platforms. They are genuinely solid products built for formal, structured one-way interviews where candidates answer preset questions on camera. For a corporate recruiting process, that structure makes sense. For camp, it feels clinical and cold, and the setup requirements on both sides of the process, account creation, longer session formats, higher price points, create friction we do not want. What we are after is a video introduction, not a video interview. That distinction shapes everything, and it is why StoryPrompt works where the others did not.

Best Interview Recording Tool: Otter.ai

Our verdict: Automatic transcription and recording of every interview across your hiring operation, with a free tier that works for most camps.

When you are hiring at volume with a handful of interviewers conducting a lot of interviews, no one person can be everywhere. A health director is screening nurses while a program director is interviewing unit leaders while the camp director is talking to department heads. Without a way to capture those conversations, your hiring decisions are only as good as someone's notes and memory.

We send Otter.ai to every interview in our system. It joins the meeting automatically, records the conversation, and produces a transcript, audio recording, and summary. Every candidate interview is logged, shareable, and searchable by anyone on the team.

What We Love

• Listen back on interviews you missed. As soon as an interview ends we get a notification. Later that day, driving somewhere or out for a walk, we listen back on 1.5x speed. You get the full picture of a candidate without it going through someone else's filter.
• Quality control across the team. Once a month we listen to a sample of interviews from each person on our team. Are they asking the right questions? Giving candidates space to talk about why they love camp? Where there are gaps, we coach.
• Everything in one candidate file. Recording links go straight into JazzHR profiles alongside the application and StoryPrompt video. Sometimes we upload a transcript or summary too. Anyone can review a candidate end-to-end without tracking anyone down.
• One account, whole team. We tie our Otter account to a dedicated mailbox ([email protected]) and automatically invite it to every interview booked through Calendly. The note-taker shows up without anyone thinking about it. Note: this is how we use it for our workflow, so review Otter's terms of service to make sure your setup aligns with their licensing.

Pricing Otter.ai has a free tier with 300 minutes per month (conversations limited to 30 minutes each), which may be enough for camps with lighter interview volume. The Pro plan is $8.33/user/month billed annually or $16.99 monthly. See current plans at otter.ai/pricing.

The Watch-outs

Candidates should be informed that their interview is being recorded. This is standard practice now and candidates are generally comfortable with it, but it is worth building it into your confirmation email so there is no surprise. In some states it is also a legal requirement to disclose recording, so worth being consistent about this regardless.

The free plan caps individual meetings at 30 minutes, which can be limiting if your interviews run longer. For camps doing volume, the Pro plan is worth the upgrade.

What Else We Tried

Google Meet's native transcription has improved but lags behind Otter.ai in interface quality and sharing functionality. Fireflies.ai and Fathom are both strong alternatives that are worth testing, and we have used them. Otter remains our default because of its interface, the depth of transcript search, and the reliability of the note-taker joining automatically.

Best Candidate Sourcing Platform: Indeed

Our verdict: The largest job site in the world, with the specific features camps need to recruit nationally rather than just locally.

Once you have exhausted your alumni network, your returning staff, and your referrals, you need to go to the job boards. For domestic camp staff, nurses, chefs, and counselors, there is one place to start: Indeed.

Indeed is the world's largest job site. Counselors, nurses, chefs, and activity specialists across every region and experience level use it regularly. For the age group and experience level most camps are hiring, it is where the candidates are.

What We Love

• Direct sync with JazzHR. Post through JazzHR and your roles feed directly into Indeed. Applicants come back into one pipeline. No duplicate systems to manage.
• The on-the-road feature. Designate your role as on-the-road (i.e., housing provided) and you can post nationally instead of being stuck within 25 miles of your camp. For a camp in the mountains of California, that default radius is basically forest. This feature, available only on paid promoted posts, opens your search to the whole country.
• Hiring insights dashboard. You can see how similar camp postings are performing in your region, which keywords candidates are actually searching, and what competing camps are posting. We use this regularly to sharpen our job descriptions.

Pricing Posting on Indeed is free, but free posts are limited to a 25-mile radius and do not surface prominently in search results. The on-the-road feature and national reach require a promoted, paid post. Camp hiring on Indeed is competitive, so budget intentionally and treat it as a real media spend. See current options at indeed.com/hire.

The Watch-outs

Indeed generates volume, which is the whole point, but a meaningful share of applicants will not be the right fit. This is not a flaw in the platform; it is the nature of high-volume sourcing. The solution is having the right downstream infrastructure, specifically JazzHR, to process that volume efficiently and surface the candidates worth pursuing. Without that, Indeed can feel like drinking from a firehose.

Where to Supplement, Selectively

Handshake, the college-focused job platform, is worth considering for roles that specifically require a degree candidate: nursing assistants from pre-med programs, sports specialists completing education degrees, theater directors finishing arts programs. For general counselor hiring, it is too broad for the cost. At a flat $34 per day per posting with no flexible spend options, it is easy to go through budget quickly without proportionate results. Reserve it for the roles where the college-student pipeline is genuinely the right fit.

Idealist can work well for senior program leadership roles where mission-alignment is part of the pitch. For frontline staff, it is not the right channel. And LinkedIn, while excellent for professional hiring, is expensive for camp roles and largely unused by the college students and young adults who make up most of our applicant pool.

The Bottom Line

None of these tools requires a big budget or a dedicated IT team. They are all designed to be set up by people who are already wearing five other hats, which is pretty much every camp director we know. The learning curve on each one is real but manageable, and the payoff is a hiring process that scales with you instead of one that breaks down at the exact moment you need it most.

You do not need all five of these running perfectly on day one. Start with JazzHR and Indeed. Get your sourcing and tracking foundation in place first. Add Calendly once scheduling becomes painful. Layer in StoryPrompt and Otter.ai as your confidence grows. Even getting one or two of these in place will make a noticeable difference.

The camp industry does an extraordinary job of doing a lot with limited resources. These tools are a chance to bring that same resourcefulness to recruiting.

Approximate Stack Cost at Peak Season JazzHR Hero (~$99/month month-to-month, plus $39/month for texting) + Calendly Teams ($16/seat per month x team size) + StoryPrompt (from $49/month) + Otter.ai (free tier or $8.33/user/month) + Indeed (variable, based on your promoted post budget). For most camps, the fixed software costs run well under $300/month. Scale up during hiring season, dial back when it is over.

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This blog was written on behalf of ACA's Project Real Job, whose goal is to support camps in their efforts to recruit, hire, and retain staff.

About the Author

Aaron Lyon, SHRM-CP, is the founder of CampHire, an executive search and domestic seasonal staffing firm specializing in summer camps. At CampHire, he focuses on recruitment operations, designing systems and tools that create seamless, high-quality experiences for both clients and candidates. He brings over a decade of experience managing the full employee lifecycle, from hiring through development, performance management, and retention. He has led enterprise talent strategies and executive hiring initiatives at companies including American Express and Tiffany & Co., recruiting senior leaders on a global scale.

Aaron grew up going to sleepaway camp and spent four summers on staff. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Hospitality and Tourism Management from UMass Amherst and is a certified SHRM-CP HR professional. He is a regular written contributor to American Camp Association publications, sharing insights on hiring strategy, leadership, and modern recruiting practices in the camp and nonprofit space.