Supervising kids isn’t all that different to managing adults, explains one people pro

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Is working as a camp counselor anything like working as an HR manager?

Ask Joe Cottew, people operations manager at coffee importer Cafe Imports, and he’ll say the two jobs are actually pretty similar. Long before Cottew ventured into HR, the then 16-year-old got his start as an assistant camp counselor at the YMCA’s Camp Ihduhapi in Loretto, Minnesota.

From crisis management to mentoring, Cottew told HR Brew how spending his summers getting kids to play nice taught him invaluable skills that have assisted him in his HR career.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did your first job help your HR career?

Being a camp counselor is one of those roles where there are so many transferable skills. When you start out as a young person and you don’t know much about anything, you learn about teamwork, leadership, following through, being true to your word, caring for others. And [what’s] absolutely essential is being able to listen and understand, because when you’re working with kids, if you don’t listen, you get lost.

Did that first job influence your career trajectory?

I stayed within that area of work for many years, grew within that summer YMCA program, and became a leader amongst the summer staff. Then later on, I came back as the camp director. I was able to move to Spain and work for the YMCA there, helping them with their international camping programs, basically exchange programs for young people in Spain to go to the US, Germany, and Hong Kong. So, it’s helped me a lot, because it really built my career in that area, which ultimately led me into human resources [and] people operations.

When did you know HR was the right fit for you?

I was a camp director in my twenties, and having a great time, and really understanding that I loved what I did. And what I realized was that my favorite part of that career was coaching and mentoring and training college-age staff, who were coming to work with the children, and lead programs…So, when we had some employee relations issues, I worked with our HR team and they walked me through what [our] best practice would be…We solved those issues, and I saw the care and the detail that they gave to my case and into what I needed to accomplish. And I realized, “Wow, like outside of the camping world, [this] is what I’m doing.” So, in many ways, that’s my favorite part of this work…Working with those individuals, finding them, hiring them, training them, and then engaging them and keeping them on board and coming back to work with us every year.

Do you have any advice for your younger self?

I studied mass communication [and] interpersonal communication, and if I would have known that there was an adjacent career path, mainly people operations, I probably would have been very focused. I think I would have realized that this is work that is fulfilling and honorable, and then also hard work. You need someone who can make decisions during tense moments. Back to those roles where I had to make decisions during difficult times, it really led to me feeling like I was supporting others and taking care of them, and focusing on what everybody’s best outcome would be. If a speaker would have come to college and said, “Hey, this is human resources, this is what we do and this is what it’s like,” I would’ve jumped on that very quickly.