This slide I will be brief. I'm just encourage you to look me up on LinkedIn, Michael Gentry GE and try and send me an invitation I'll accept every single invitation and and I hope to have a more targeted chat with each of you.
And I don't ever to chase the other Jason coming on now. So Jason is actually our GM and Yosemite. So we thought it'd be great to have him join and talk with you guys to
let you tell us, Katie, all the locations that auto camp has while we're waiting for Jason to connect. Sure, and
Jason's on
for the night. Yeah, you're good.
So in the meantime, we have Russian River which is up in Sonoma County, so Guerneville California, and that's a smaller property. It's 35 keys. Yosemite, we're just Jason's property as 103 keys and that's in midpines California. Just about 45 minutes or so from Yosemite gates. And then Cape Cod opened last April and that's in Falmouth, Massachusetts. It's right on Buzzards Bay, just a really beautiful New England location. And then we just opened Joshua Tree, December 30. So and we're about 10 minutes from the park dates for that one.
That's fantastic. So Jason, we heard from your teammates here, they give us a brief intro. We would love to hear from you your name what you do. Tell us a little bit about your auto camp experience.
Sure. My name is Jason Brannon, and I'm the general manager. As Katie mentioned at our Yosemite property. I've been with autocamp for a little bit more than two years since November of 19. And as I mentioned, I'm a General Manager. We have a team of about 35 to 45 here on property. Lots of outdoor enthusiast lots of guests from the Bay Area and Los Angeles come in to get outdoors and experience a different way to enjoy hospitality.
Can you folks tell us you're hiring now and I know that you're hiring in a multitude of locations, the types of jobs that we have available to set the scene for this call of when we're talking about benefits and perks and things like that. What types of jobs are even available?
Yeah, so
Jason, maybe you could start with yours because I know you have probably the most property positions open right now.
Right? So I mean, we have jobs, from anything from executive leadership on a corporate level to housekeepers. As of last month, just at my property alone, I had almost a quarter of my positions open. So you know, if you're, if you're interested in working on the property level, at at an auto camp, we have housekeeping team that helps housekeepers and Houseman and supervisors and managers. We have a guest experience team that assists at the front desk and it consists of concierge as well as front desk, and again, supervisors and manager in that department. We have a maintenance team that provides landscaping and maintenance across the property takes care of our air streams. And that's a medium sized department. I think I have a total of six people there. And then we have our AMG or our leadership team, executive leadership team for the property which consists of an assistant general manager and myself. So my total leadership team is about seven if you include the the supervisors, managers and myself that steer the direction and success of the property with about another 30 to 40 ish. Other team members, depending upon the season. Yeah,
and then the Basecamp support level. So we call our home office or corporate office Basecamp support which is why we align really well with Basecamp two, that we are currently looking for GMs for the new openings, and that one is going to be in Utah we have totally announced that not yet but we've got a property that's going to be opening next year in Utah that we're looking for. Really we'll be looking for all leadership team and all roles. So housekeeping maintenance, front desk, everything and then also at the base camp level. We're currently looking for a design manager, people for our acquisitions team, so people who go out and find land to put auto campsites at but we're also going to be adding it into our accounting team this quarter, people and culture and then the biggest hiring push right now is Catskills. So we are looking at opening Catskills in the next few months and we will be looking for AGM housekeeping super supervisor front desk supervisor, maintenance managers, plus all the line level staff of housekeeping house Person guest experience everything
we have some of the base camps and we have some new sales and marketing jobs. East and west coast and associated with properties on both coasts. Cool. Wow. Wow.
That's a lot that's there's a little something for everyone. Yeah, it's what I'm gathering. So first of all, on a personal level, I'm very interested to know where the Catskills property was because I did I lived in Woodstock for three years. So
we're so technically we're in Saugerties right at the border between Saugerties and Woodstock cool.
Ah, so for all anyone who doesn't know that area, that's a fantastic location less than two hours from New York City. And just beautiful and seems sort of remote but actually not there. So many towns like scattered all throughout the Hudson Valley. Hudson Valley super, super cool for like, a lot of people who've moved up from New York City who are creatives and entrepreneurs and yeah, anyway, I could talk about that region all day. So I would love to know kind of what positions of everything that you mentioned are sort of entry level or maybe don't require a super specific background.
Yeah, and that's going to be more of our property roles. So you know, your guest experience who's responsible for checking in and checking out guests and helping to kind of guide their adventure when they're exploring the area around those properties and housekeeping and to some extent, depending on what the past experience has been our maintenance kind of general maintenance staff can be fairly entry level too because it can be more of like a almost like handyman position. For lack of a better description.
And then on the basis of the we also have reservations as well, which is a good a good place to start to understand the the finance and if you want to move into the front desk, you can go there if you want to move into revenue management, you could go in that direction. So it definitely opens different opportunities. And it's a remote position.
Right. Oh okay, very cool. I did not realize that there were even remote opportunities with auto camps. That's very good. You know, in our meetings, we've talked a lot about nomads and people that want to break into the industry or contribute to the industry in between bouts of wanderlust, essentially and you know, put their stamp on a location, maybe go to another location after that or just keep traveling, which is also very cool, but they're remote positions. That's good to know. Can you maybe dive into that a little bit better. Katie? I think what a lot of people want to know about is that that living situation, so I know that some of your locations have housing available and or a place to park if you're a van lifer. So can you tell us a bit more about that?
Yeah. So right now with the four properties that we have open Cape Cod is the one that has housing available so and it's a shared housing. So to kind of tell you guys what it looks like, and we have a couple of options. One is a two bedroom condo that our supervisors live in so it's not a shared room but shared common space. And then we have a four bedroom house that is open to any other line staff who's looking for housing or would need to relocate or is seasonal, and that is shared room. So Max two people in a room and then shared common areas. And that property is actually bikable to the property, the autocamp property as well. So it's pretty easy to get around and it's in Falmouth, which is actually a nice little town and has groceries and things like that that are readily accessible. For the other properties. Joshua Tree that housing is pretty plentiful just in Joshua Tree area anyways, so we don't have employment or employer sponsored housing, but in the areas that we're going into like Moab, that's where we're currently looking at having additional housing, and possibly working with area campgrounds for Van lifers who want a long term lease. Our idea is that as we have more properties, it becomes a little bit more easy to go from an auto camp to auto camp season by season. So if you look at Joshua Tree, their peak season is really October to May, whereas Yosemite this season is made October so you can conceivably have a full time position going from auto camp to auto camp as long as we can flex on on what that living situation looks like and kind of help with that.
So I'm curious if everyone who's watching could throw in the chat like give me a one word descriptor of sort of the type of position you might be looking for because I'm trying to gauge who is watching and what we can speak to you that would be most valuable, valuable for you all since there is such a wide range of opportunities. I want to make sure that we're speaking to what's valuable for everyone. So feel free to throw in the chat just like a one word like you know if it's hospitality or like you know, guest services or something marketing, I don't know throw it in the chat. Yeah.
Just to to kind of talk about this too. So our Basecamp roles and we operate on kind of a hybrid remote model so most of our team is remote and able to work from their home. And then we come in together orderly here in Santa Barbara, so not a bad place to travel to when you have to and have our general meetings or department cross department meetings and things like that. So we're we're going to be operating on this hybrid model for the foreseeable future. Cool.
Nice. Okay, so I see let's see, we've got corporate finance, marketing, consulting, project management, freelance content. I'm curious to know if autocamp works with freelancers. That's something that we have a lot of freelancers in our Facebook group. So yeah, that would be great to speak to
Yeah, we, um, we have done a couple of freelance items, especially in like the marketing realm. It really has been more on a case by case basis, what that need is for that quarter, and if there's a project that we need to get some additional assistance on, but we're definitely open to it.
Awesome. Well, it looks like we have a very wide array of folks here, which is great. We can hear about all sorts of
things. Yeah. And I saw one pop up that was like experiential tours too. So locally. We work with a lot of vendors on different programming for our guests. And we're constantly kind of looking to see what how we can build that out even more. So. There'll be some more probably roles to come there related to programming and experience overall, too. Would you Oh,
go ahead, Jason.
Just to piggyback on that. I think when we're looking for people that are going to be considered for guest experience with our front desk, we actually used to call them adventure guides. So having that as a focus or something that you're really excited about is something that would really get your foot in the door. And as we grow and work towards having more experiential stays. There, there will likely be positions that we create within in order to accommodate that rather than using third parties.
Okay, makes sense. Nicole, I'm going to have you come up and ask your question in a second, just because then you can clarify for which roles you mean, and we can talk about compensation a little bit. But I'm curious if somebody does have skill sets in an area that you're not hiring if you do welcome a pitch from you know, maybe a freelancer or creative or someone that's like you know, AutoCAD could benefit from this and I do it.
Yeah, absolutely. So I now probably almost every day get a reach out like that. Oh, cool. I'm looking for and, and I know our social media team gets the same but we really do like to compile those and share that with especially our marketing team. Those tend to be the ones that we get reached out most for. But we share it with our VP and they can take it from there. So happy to take those
and do any stand out like if I was going to do it. And I did X, Y and Z would you be like, Oh, that's a good one.
Yeah, I think for me, what stands out is someone who's really done their research on autocamp and can share that passion. And another thing that's really important for us is an alignment on our core values. And so one of those is you know, love the environment. And so as someone who can help share, you know, how they personally live that and how their work relates to it. That's a big way for us to connect. Okay,
great tip. Nicole, are you all set to ask?
Sure, yeah. And just pretty basic. So the positions that I was just looking at I actually am based in my Utah so kind of excited to hear that you guys are looking at moving over here. So of course, the Utah based ones immediately catch my eyes. So I noticed just quick browse, and I'll admit, I didn't do any kind of deep diving before this call. But I didn't notice any kind of salary ranges. So I'm curious how you determine that not to necessarily put you on the spot for those two specific roles, but it's always nice for us on the on the candidate side to know what kind of monetary range we're dealing with so that we're not wasting your time and vice versa. Yeah, and that's a huge thing for us too. So candidly, I actually have a proposal and with our executive team about adding compensation to our job postings and really wanting to help drive that so I'm glad you brought that up. They'll help me fuel my argument to them. I think you know, what we the process that we go through to look at any sort of way, especially when we're looking at properties like Moab is we're going to do a market assessment of what's happening in the market. And our goal is to be at the top of that market so that we're really competitive on wages. And I think you know, for property positions, generally, you know, housekeeping right now in Moab tends to be like 18 to 20 bucks an hour on the last assessment we looked at so that would be our goal, just kind of as a reference point. Does that help? Sure. And I guess, somewhat related to that. If, if you don't get to the point where you're necessarily putting salary ranges directly in the job position, at what point do during the hiring process, does that normally come up? We do that in the screening call. So that first initial call that you would have with us we talk compensation because we don't want to waste your time if that's not going to work for you. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for that.
Yeah. Love that for us. Oh, by the
way, the most of them won't have jobs have not gotten bored yet. I think we just have the big job. So you'll someday soon you'll see the full complement of jobs. Yeah, cool.
Yeah, in a call considering you're in market. Definitely shoot us your information because we can we can talk as we get those jobs posted. Awesome. Sounds good. I'll do that. Thank you did I just I have found a few minutes late. The contact information gets sent out or was that in an
email? Not yet, but we will send that after the Yeah, don't worry.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you
Jason, I would love to hear a little bit more about your experience at autocamp kind of how long you've been with the company. And also, you know what it's been like for you just to get back personal anecdote. Sure. It's
been super exciting and also really challenging because I did start in November of 19. So you know, what's happened in since November of 19. But, you know, I, you know, moved here from Austin. I lived in a city for five years. And previous to that I worked on a ranch in Montana, and I really wanted to get back outdoors and this opportunity arose and I moved across the country to a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas to a small team that is really tight. And it's been really inspiring to watch this company grow even through the difficult times of the past two years. So I mean, it's definitely been a journey in the sense that it's been challenging for the whole world. But being with this company that is so focused on being outside and being together and very collaborative, because at this point, it's a very new company like you know, we only have four open properties, so right for the properties right now. And, but with with many more plan to come so the future looks really bright. The people that work for the organization have a mentality and a drive that are shared amongst one another. And it's just a really good group of people to work for. So it's been a great two years and I look forward to the future. You know, I've only been here two years, and I've been to all of the properties, even even ones that haven't opened. So it's nice to know that there's movement in the future and lots of opportunities. No matter where you start, you can end up in a different place. You just have to decide where you want to go and the pathway is in front of you.
So that segues into growth. Growth is the number two thing that bass campers want to know about before applying for a position because they want to know, this is a very unique scenario where we're saying, if you want to just pop in and pop out great, but it sounds like if you do want to make a long term career with autocamp happen that you can so what would that look like how do you set people up for success?
Well, I can give you an example of Yosemite specifically. I came on board about six months after the property opened and the majority of my current leadership team is still in place from when we open Oh, so that speaks volumes to the organization. But, you know, give one example, our housekeeping supervisor when we opened, became a housekeeping manager who's now the AGM of the property. She's She travels to Cape Cod and to Russian River and to Joshua Tree helping with our training program. She's a really, really bright part of our future. I'm sure Katie can can will substantiate that. And that's not just her when you know when, when she moved up into the AGM position we also moved up a guest experience supervisor into a guest experience manager and housekeeping supervisor moved into a housekeeping manager. So you know, the ebbs and flows and hospitality can can happen frequently. And if you're in the right place at the right time, which I think is any place within autocamp Right now, the opportunities are expensive.
Yeah, and I think one thing that we're currently building is a leadership and training program too. So for someone who's currently aligned level and wants to go into a supervisory role or a new manager, and something that's really a huge initiative for us this year is to get a really robust training program to help get people ready for that next role. And so that should, you know, be a big piece of it, because we really want to rapidly expand so as we're looking at our growth model for auto camp overall, ideally, in the next few years, we'd want to be at the range of doing five to 10 openings a year. That's a lot of positions to fill, and we want to be able to promote those team members from within and bring people who live in breathe out Oh camp and know the culture into those new positions and new new roles.
Do you have paid education stipends anything like that as well for personal development? or professional development?
Yeah, we do. Absolutely. So we reimburse for specific training courses that are related to your current role or role that you want to go into. We generally do up to about $1,500 a year per team member, and that's, you know, just verified by that supervisor. Or manager to make sure it's part of your growth plan.
Okay, very cool. So people have growth plans, and there's somebody out there helping them watching them advocating for them. Yep.
Part of that annual review is what are those upcoming trainings that we're giving you in these next few quarters? Whether they're internal or out side?
Okay, very cool. Um, and, you know, I'd love to bring it up here as well out of you two really good question I love you to ask and also I'm very much enjoying your facial expressions throughout the video. They're very expressive.
Thank you. Thank you. I did acting in haste. Really? Very impressive. Um, yeah, so I am currently I'm a teacher. So not yet a nomad but hoping to become nomadic this summer. So I'm really curious about how long that hiring process let's again like right now I am a teacher. I'm planning to finish out the school year. So I'm very curious, like, when I could start applying.
Yeah. And it really would depend on what kind of role you want to go into. So if it's a property like guest experience role, we're usually trying to fill those at least before our peak season. So some of the jobs that we're posting now, you know, we'd want to have in place by March or April. But we also understand that people have lives and we kind of can try and work through your timeline as long as it's not a rule that we're critically trying to fill that hole right now. One other thing that we haven't even posted yet but it might be of interest to you is we're going to be looking for a director of training
this quarter. So
might align with that teaching thing it very cool. Thank you so much.
I love that tip. I love hearing how you can translate like one level of experience into a totally different field, but like the skills are totally related. So super cool. Thanks for that, Katie. Yeah, um, so let's talk a little bit about some more of the benefits and perks of working at autocamp. So you mentioned obviously, you know, the, you know, opportunity for growth and how you're supporting that. What else can people look forward to?
Yeah, so for full time team members, we do kind of your traditional health benefits of medical dental vision, we have a 401k plan. PTO accrual. One thing that we also do that's a little bit different is we do to adventure days every year which are basically like two extra days off to go out and adventure and come back and share what that was with the team. We have a whole Google chat room. I've done adventure logs of what they're doing, which is really fun. And then for our partnering team, too, we have we add in an EA key benefit which offers mental health resources financial assistance kind of resources. And then we just started working with a new benefit broker who has a marketplace that is open to all of our team members regardless of full time or part time that offers things like pet insurance and life insurance and some of these other items that you may be looking for.
Outside of work do.
We have a fitness reimbursement,
and fitness reimbursement, so we do up to $30 a month for wellness reimbursements.
That's very cool. Those are great perks and that adventure day thing that sounds like show and tell for adults.
It basically is. I like that
a lot. Um,
so another thing I'm curious about is people with families where they might fit into the autocamp sphere. Um, I guess the question is are people you know with children and families and dogs welcome to apply or is it more single folks that you're, you're getting?
Yeah, I mean, obviously, definitely. Welcome to apply. I think where it would come down to is if they are relocating to that area, being able to find appropriate housing and our Cape Cod housing is not currently set up for families or pets, unfortunately. But we also try and get involved in the community and be able to offer referrals where we can but it just it's very, very dependent on what that person is looking for and what's available in the market is, I will say a lot of our team members are parents, whether furry or human parents, you know, and so we try and be as accommodating as we can. Okay.
We currently have married couple who, because Cape Cod is in their slow season drove costs across country, and they're working here at Yosemite. So we fortunately had positions in both of their departments available for them to come out. And spend a month six weeks with us when it's a little bit quieter on the east coast. So
that's great. I love that. Do you have like internal tools that facilitate that sort of thing? Or is that just a conversation that you have with an HR person when your contract is coming? to an end? What does that look like? Yeah, it
would be a conversation with us and HR about what else is open? For sure. I think, you know, Cape Cod. This particular Cape Cod to Yosemite was a little bit of a different this is our first winter in Cape Cod. So you know, it was kind of a case by case basis. I've come out to Yosemite and who was kind of prepared for that. But going forward as we have more properties. I think that that opportunity will just continue to expand but it would just happen with conversations between managers and HR.
This might be a question for Jason again, um, but day to day like what is it? What is it looking like in terms of what you're doing? And I know that will be position specific, but generally speaking, are you working five days a week? Are you working? You know, like a four days on three days off type thing? Do you get weekends off? What sort of schedule Do you have? Because I guess the question is, how much time do you have to enjoy nature on your off time?
Well, work life balance is certainly important and the majority of our team members are not salaried on an hourly basis and such. The expectation is not more than a 40 hour workweek. Okay, so, but we are in hospitality. We're a 24 hour business with guests spending the night so we have someone staff that might take particular property 24 hours a day. So we're there's someone in the morning, there's someone at night, there's someone overnight, and that's seven, seven nights a week in hospitality, the holidays and the weekends are when people travel, that's when they have time off. So understanding that your work life balance means that maybe you're going to have Monday, Tuesday off to go explore the park when there's nobody there and really have nature to yourself. But there's not a set schedule. You may end up in a somewhat set schedule based upon what your job is. And my hours are completely different from somebody that works night on it. So it runs the gamut and it's really it's really position specific.
Okay, yeah, Monday Tuesday is to explore the park would be frankly ideal that it
is great and, and because we're open seven days a week there's flexibility in a schedule, so you're not stuck in a nine to five Monday through Friday schedule. If that's your normal schedule, and you have something you want to do on a Friday and want to work on a Sunday. We're a small bunch of people that if we can plan and take care of our guests and provide a great experience, we're flexible. You know, you just have to work with the team around you to make sure that all of our bases are covered to to take care of our guests take care of the business. So there's there's definitely flexibility in hospitality. But the hours are a little bit different from typical bankers hours.
Okay. And do you find yourself Oh, go ahead. On the
property level, that can be different if for various jobs on the base camp level, it just really depends.
I see. Do you personally find yourself hopping into every role all the time?
I have trouble disconnecting but that's me. So I tend to also work at night and then check in on the weekends so I don't get behind but it's it's just how I go about how I go about things.
Fair enough. Yep.
Awesome. Um, Katie, can you tell us a little bit about auto camps commitment to di and, you know, diverse hiring practices and supporting diverse team members? You know, once you
Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, as a young company, this is something that we're continuing to evolve in and continue to grow. And we have some big, big company goals this year around dei really wanting to have some quantifiable programs in place by the end of the year. And but one thing that kind of comes at our core, one of our core values is better together. And the belief around that is that the outdoors are for everyone and should be a safe and welcoming environment for everyone regardless of backgrounds. And so that's true for our team and it's true for our guests. And so we really want to make sure that we're creating that safe environment and our properties and within our communities. So we also try and do a lot of philanthropy within our communities, as well. And, you know, one initiative that we're looking at this year is how can we work with groups to are getting, you know, kind of inner city youth out into the outdoors? Are there ways for us to be able to give back that way and kind of bring up the next generation of outdoor enthusiast? But I think, you know, if we definitely always can be better, I think everyone can do better in this realm of Dei. We are very lucky to have half of our executive leadership team as female, that we have probably about 43% of overall auto campers are female as well. And our property teams tend to kind of marry the local community. So I think by bringing in more nomads that helps us kind of bring in more diverse backgrounds and experience and perspectives and so as we do more programs like this, it will help to
awesome, that's fantastic to hear. Yeah, I'm thinking about how how to make an inclusive space I guess for you know, nomads and supporting nomads in wanting to continue their you know, nomadic lifestyle and wanderlust So, right. Yeah,
it's like we have someone in our marketing team now who is a van lifer. And I think every time she's on a different zoom call, she has a different background of where she is, and it's been really cool to kind of know that we're able to help support that journey. For her and she can work out of wherever
she wants to chill. She level goes up every time she goes on.
Yeah, we're all really jealous of Mackenzie's man life. I love that.
And so it's I'm sure the work life balance at each location is different and also versus like a corporate role versus working at a property. Can you talk a little bit about work life balance for the more corporate roles?
Sure. Yeah. I think um, you know, it kind of ebbs and flows at the base camp level, mostly because when we're in the throes of an opening, like I will say, the week between Christmas and New Years, people like Mike were at Joshua Tree putting together heaters help us get the property open, right. So there wasn't a whole lot of work. Life Balance that week. But I think for the most part, we try and be really respectful of people's time outside of work. And we use tools like Google Chat, but we don't have any problem with someone shutting off their chat in the evening because they're with their families, right. And we don't expect people to respond immediately. 24 hours a day. I think we all treat each other as adults and know that you're going to be able to make good decisions for your role and know when it's an urgent response needed and when there's time to process.
Do you have any examples? I'm a little bit putting on the spot here of folks that I've worked with autocamp and then went on to have careers in the outdoor industry, not necessarily with autocamp but really using the skills they gained to continue on that trajectory
is a good question. We, I'm trying to think of who has left recently and gone on to some other roles. And to be honest, not anything is like coming top of mind right now.
And that Yeah, and that might say that if you are promoting people from within, and they're saying within the company maybe that's a great story. I guess the question I'm getting at is like how how maybe how do they do that? Like somebody that you mentioned, I heard Jason mentioned. Yeah, moving up within their department and or some people moving on to the HQ team, which is great. So
yeah, we have like, there's one person that comes to buy she started his front desk in Russia River, and ended up coming down here to Santa Barbara and being the GM of our initial property here in Santa Barbara. That unfortunately, isn't here anymore. But and then she moved into a corporate role. So she started as a reservation supervisor at Basecamp. And then she is now an operations manager who helps with all of our openings. And so that's someone who has been able to go not only from property to Basecamp, but also different areas within Basecamp.
Very cool. Um, Natalie, you had a very good question about culture. I'd love to bring you up so that you can ask that and let everyone know you know, what pieces of culture in particular you might be interested in? Because I'm sure everyone else is too.
Yeah, sure. Um, I'm really curious about company culture, like in relation to people who are like recent grads or early career creatives.
Yeah, really good question. We were actually just talking about this at our people in culture meetings today. A lot of our job descriptions especially more of like the entry like base camp level, is, you know, only fresh out of school or one year of experience or something that is kind of commiserate experience. So we have a lot of team members currently in Basecamp, who are more junior in their career, and this is some of them. This is their first job outside of college. And so I think we really, it goes back to wanting to foster that. The next generation of people who are enthusiastic about the outdoors and getting people outside. And so we're super open to that it is the HR person animation say there's been it is kind of a younger company in that way, right. And so it's definitely very, very open to
that. Oh, that's great. We didn't even get to talk about that in our exploratory call. But in base camp, there are so many there's so many students first of all, and it can be really frustrating when you don't have experience to understand where you can go to get experience. It's just one of those cycles that people find themselves in and it's very frustrating. So I can point people to you these days, which is great.
If I might really add a couple of things on why come to people that are that get frustrated. Oftentimes it's because they haven't really developed a good luck planning for their career center. Today, people spend probably more time planning their vacation than they do planning their career and I'm just speculating, that's probably the opposite of the way it should be. But how I see people really, really having successful careers, those that are trying to break into the industry and don't have any experience. And both of us come from the same background in this. We started off in in team member jobs. We started off I started off actually as a mechanic the people that make the best executive, housekeeping directors are the people that started off as a housekeeper. And they work their way up to the housekeeping lead than they do all of a sudden they become promoted to the housekeeping supervisor. And seven years later, they're the executive housekeeper of Bellagio. That's how it works. So for me, it's all about I think having a career plan and then executing on that plan. And for people that aren't, don't have experience in in the hospitality world. It's it's a stretch you're not you're probably not going to get a job offer as a director of marketing if you've never marketed and hotel property. But if you've worked your way up to that marketing organization to performance and good promotions on stuff you can consider director of marketing position very easily just takes work and dedication being the right person doing the job. The right way, and behaving while you're at it.
So that really that's super good insight. I think we should maybe segue into applications and what does make people stand out. So what I'm hearing is that you should sort of have a plan if loose, and say here's my career goal if you're entry level, and maybe tell the story of how autocamp fits into that. But I'm also curious when someone is at that entry level stage, and they can't say I've done it before, what would make them stand out or what traits or characteristics would you see that would make you want to hire that person?
That's an easy one. This is the nature of the culture of our company. You know if you if you love nature, if you're experiencing nature if you've been a camper, hiker and adventure if you kayak dolly Yukon if you've done any of those cool things that many of the people here have, that gets our attention immediately.
Okay, very good. And by the way, those people
that do that I think they're almost universally qualified as a guest experience team member. We just need to train you a little bit of the of the how the front of the house the you know, the front desk type of work, but the guest experience work let's let's just talking about your experiences with with guests, and arranging their own experiences in a passionate way. And there's the other thing, that's the passion. You know, we can tell we can tell immediately in a conversation whether somebody is just having a conversation with us to get a job or the other end of the spectrum, somebody that is passionate about nature, passionate about hospitality, and wants to have a career and we can tell the difference in the first 10 seconds of the conversation.
Okay, very interesting. So definitely tie in that piece about why you actually want to help other people get outside.
Exactly, yep.
Very cool. Okay. Awesome.
I want to encourage everyone to throw questions in the chat if you're if you have any on your mind so that we can make sure we take advantage of you know, the next about 30 minutes here with our auto camp, folks. So definitely throw your questions into the chat. Katie, maybe you can tell us a little bit about the application process. How do you prefer people apply? What is it that you like to see, you know, in a cover letter, maybe? Tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so
all of our jobs are posted on our careers page and the preference is definitely to go through that site just because it allows us to have one kind of source of truth for applicants and not lose track of people outside of that. And we do have it set up to where if you have your resume, you can just click a button and say fill out application with resume so that it will populate for you and you can just kind of periphery to make sure everything looks like you know you want it before you hit submit. We do ask for a cover letter on management roles on property and then base camp roles. And part of it is just to be able to kind of get to know you a little bit and and see if that passion comes through and and if it is personalized, I think you know kind of one of the things that I look for is did you personalize your cover letter so that it's coming to autocamp and talking about the job that you're wanting and not just kind of a generic form letter. If it's generic, I just kind of think that maybe this isn't really what you want, right? And so I think that's a big point and just driving any connection to our mission, or core values, which all of that is also on our website. So being able to kind of harken back to that and say this is how, you know, I get it done in my daily life because that's one of our core values. And so I think that that's that's really key and something that I would look for.
Sorry, mute is about how long will it take before someone knows if they're going to be pushed forward in the process or not?
Yeah, so you will get an initial email that just says, Hey, thanks. We've got your application. We're reviewing it, and we try to reach out to candidates, at least within the first few days of application to let you know if we're going to move forward with a screening or if virtually, you didn't meet the qualifications, and we'll let you know that as well. I think this is an area that we're continuing to work on is making sure that that communication is top of mind and that everyone knows where they stand in the process. And that's one of the reasons we brought in Mike Gentry as a Director of Recruitment to be able to help us balance that and and ensure that the communication is really prompt.
It's hard it's it's a moving target for sure. Yeah. You know, one
of the reasons that we like all the applications to come through our website, why not like a site email that gets lost in the shuffle,
right? There's, there's some good reasons on the back end as well. We have an automated offer letter process that kind of extracts data from Paylocity and send you the offer letter. And if you haven't, if you haven't gone through Paylocity it's hard to get them off from under to
Fair enough. That does bring up a question that that's very common in Basecamp, which is I have applied for a job, should I now reach out to the hiring manager and you know, just ping them and follow up. And I feel that it's a very subjective question. I often say yes, you should, if you haven't heard anything, but I'd love to hear from your team. If that's something that is looked upon, positively or negatively.
In my mind, it's positive because I think it shows that desire and passion I would say if you applied this morning and you haven't heard anything and you email me in the afternoon, I might be a little bit delayed.
That's fair, a
reasonable amount of time hasn't gone has gone by and you haven't heard anything, absolutely reach out. And I think ultimately, you know, we all get busy. I think that that's a fact. And so there are times that sometimes recruiting gets put on the back channel and when we get pinged it helps us bring it to the front. And I think you know, Jason, you probably weigh in from the property of what you guys would want to see for that.
Yeah, I mean, if, if you're excited enough to reach back out, then I'm excited to talk to you a second or a third time and if you have the confidence to to assume that you're the right fit for the job. It sets you up in a better position and makes me feel confident about you. So I'm all for it. You know, as Katie said, like, if there's not even a close that and you need to reach out to me five times that's not going to change my opinion. But for somebody that is is innately a good fit. The line of communication can sometimes get distracted, because we're busy on property. And I'll tell you, I want to put recruiting into the forefront as frequently as I can. So yeah, engage me as much as you like.
I would add a little flavor to that as well. When somebody does it, right. When they when they found the hiring manager. They figure out who the hiring manager is and they develop the right kind of documentation and so that, for me, it's like, oh, you're smart. I need to talk to you. I need to talk to you again. If you if you slip, make an error and you send that to the CEO, or or the, you know the maintenance person in the wrong facility. Well, that sounds a message as well. So I would say it depends upon how you do it. When you do it. Right. I think all three of us will agree that that is a positive checkmark in the column for you.
Yeah, and I definitely want to piggyback on how you do it. I think that regardless of which job you're applying for, you should go out of your way to be as professional as you possibly can. Maybe, you know, in in someone's mind, applying to be a front desk agent is something that I don't have to take a lot of time with my updating my resume and with a cover letter that's specific to the property or a follow up letter interview that talks specifically about topics that we talked about, or touches points about me personally or the property personally so that I see that there's a connection. The further you go with that and the more professional you are, whether you're applying for a housekeeping position, or a director level position at base camp is going to put you at the front or the top of the stack, so to speak.
That was that was super helpful insight and I will also remind everyone that especially for a customer service position, an email that you're sending is an example of the way that you do customer service. So it is an extra work sample in a way, which is a really great opportunity to show. If I'm sending an email on behalf of your company. Here's how it might look because I'm sending this one to you right now. So you're getting a little writing sample in there and you're showing persistence and follow up which for autocamp I think would be all great things to see.
And you never know who you're you never know who your audience is. I was an English major in college and worked as an editor in publishing for the first two or three years of my career. Okay. So, if I if I have a I mean like I will, I will dismiss things that maybe I shouldn't because of the lack of attention to detail.
Okay, really. So check your grammar, no grade,
your grade the cover letter and send it back to them.
No, no.
Michelle, you had a wonderful question. Would you like to come on up and ask that one?
Yes. Hi. Um, so yeah, definitely as a company
that is so dedicated to nature and being in the outdoors. Obviously we all love to spend time out in the outdoors and you know, experience what nature has to offer. But we are also facing terrible climate crisis. So I'm very curious what you have done as a company to sort of protect that playground that we all like to go out and be in. Yeah, and I will say our initiatives kind of vary by property because we'll work with local resources too. So Jason committee talked about some of the partnerships with Yosemite and the Lang Lang conservancy there but each property has a philanthropic partner that we work with, and it's local. So there are groups that either help get people outdoors help preserve the natural environment. So we work with the 300 committee and Falmouth who does public land conservation, and they can come and do campfire chats with our guests and help educate them and our team. And then some of the other initiatives that we do like we don't burn natural firewood on any of our properties. But we'll use a compressed wood product so that our guests can do it in a safe way and cook over a campfire and have s'mores but it's, you know, cleaner burning and not as bad for the environment. We are a California company. So wildfires are a very big part of our summers. And so we try to do all we can to prevent that. And I think you know, overall from a design standpoint, when we're looking at potential properties, we also look at, are there ways for us to reduce our impact? Can we do self sustained kind of sewer systems or power systems? Where are we getting water from? And as we go into some of these other locales, where we'll actually have to be able to do more self sustaining, that's something that we want to do too.
Little a little bit about that. Here at Yosemite, as she mentioned, we're in the heart of the fire country, in the Sierra Nevadas. You know, it can be plus 100 degrees in the rain for months on end up here. So minimizing those campfire impacts is a big thing for us. Our local partner currently that we we donate $1 per room to his nature bridge, and it's an educational group that their mission is to get children outside. It's looking face it started here in Yosemite, but it's in different parks across the country. But getting people outside learning how to you know, leave what you find and respect wildlife. Those are important tenants tenants to us. We're completely on a well system with our own wastewater treatment plant. So it's a it's a big part of our culture.
That's, that's great to hear. Yeah, I live in BC so I'm very familiar with the wildfire risk. So
we've been dealing with that up here too. So it's good that you guys are focused on that.
Awesome. So tell us a little bit about what are the most urgent roles that you're trying to fill right now.
Top of mind right now is Catskills because we're right around the corner from opening that property. So
all the gold rolls, okay, anything to do with cat skills, not necessarily just on property, but anything.
Yeah. We even have like a more remote sales role that would be someone doing group sales for Catskills in Cape Cod. So that one's remote on the East Coast and some time on property. And we also I would say the other urgent ones would be design manager. is another big one that is coming up here soon.
Can when you say design manager, do you mean like graphic design or what type of design do you
mean? Architecture Design?
Oh, I don't know how to do that. Okay. That's very cool and sounds very high tech.
On the property. So the rules are for Catskills. They're going to be the same ones that the rest of the properties. It'll be a night auditor. There'll be housekeepers. There'll be house persons. There'll be guest experienced team members of the maintenance team members. They'll be supervisors and managers over all of those functions. And typically they report to the AGM within reports the
GM what is house persons mean?
My version that might make description of house person isn't good is a it's a housekeeper that maintains the public areas outside and the general clubhouse Okay, so, the housekeeper's they are generally focused on the airstream in the tents and the cabins and the house persons the rest of the property
and their house per se is also sorry, go ahead and just
we have a couple different types of house persons there's house persons that in other other hotels, they may call them public area attendants, and we call them house persons here. But then we also have house persons that are a little bit more behind the scenes that help fill the housekeeping golf carts and work with inventory and stripping beds and doing the pre work before the housekeeper's go in and clean and running guest supplies to and from guest rooms in the evening. So there's a sort of it's sort of a catch all because there's so many so many different responsibilities with providing a heightened level of hospitality in this outdoor experience, but it's a it's a multi faceted role with autocamp.
We did have I think at the moment we've got 3032 job titles posted on the job board. About two thirds of those are property job titles. 1/3 of them are Basecamp titles,
okay. So a fantastic mix. Really. The people that are on the property of uniforms are a big part of my decision making of a job so what are they wearing? Are they are they comfy Well, I
mean, it's fairly relaxed, but there are standards. So, you know, at the front desk, for instance, our guest experience team, they were flannels, long sleeve flowers in the wintertime to work in a plaid shirt in the summertime jeans and hiking shoes or tennis shoes, and obviously the front desk you need your name out so that you can the guests can remember who they've spoken to, but it's pretty relaxed. We definitely don't have people in Butler's costumes out here in the woods. So,
okay. Flannel sound great. You lost me a jeans but
your interview without again.
You know that's it. That's a pretty common question actually, to people don't actually know how to show up for an outdoor industry job because you're not wearing you're not wearing a tux there. That's clear, but you do want to be professional so it is good to sort of set expectations with that. You know, show up looking crisp and good but you don't have to be out outrageously professional or dressed up gussied up. Yeah. That's an REI or Patagonia works well. Exactly. Those narrow Westballz my wardrobe. Me too Okay, very cool. Sorry. I lost my train of thought there because everyone's talking about flannels, which is my love language. Is their is there favorite moments that you can share from your time at autocamp? Yeah, um,
I will say for me, I think one of my favorite moments came from right before the pandemic hit. We are doing a summit at Yosemite actually with Jason and his team. And all of our Basecamp team was there. We had invited members of each property and just came together for kind of a couple days of just being together and learning more about what we want to do as a company and doing you know, s'mores by the campfire and that kind of Camp chants and things like that and boom chicka boom. And it was just really fun and a great period of being together. I think the other thing that I really love and kind of favorite memories would be when we come together on property to help something happened. So at one point in rushing the river, we went from having our housekeeping team outsourced meaning they're not our team members to bringing it in house and having that be our team members. And we did that in the summer of 2020. So middle of the pandemic starting and it was very kind of chaotic and find a bed I saw our CEO come and help scrub toilets and our CEO come up and check in guests and I think just having a team that rallies together and has each other's backs. Those always make the best memories for me.
A heated when she steals every company I've ever worked for when they say one team one team, but when the work starts all the directors and VPs are stuff out gone right? So I went to auto Joshua Tree and I'm out there working and I'm looking around the CEOs they're doing work the SVPs open bottles of water back and forth left's and rights three directors are working. This is actually the first team that I did on my career, because at Boeing was of its time feel content never came down and turned to rich on the flightline at Boeing right but this company is different people actually work and help and I've I've only been here for five months. Pretty great collection of interesting people here with great values.
I have one that's a little bit different. Although Katie reminded me of it. Mine didn't happen right before the pandemic but slightly after the pandemic. But the first time around, we closed for about three months. That sort of March to June period in 2020. And I moved on to the property to be sort of like the caretaker like imagine the shining. It's the winter here in the mountains. I'm all by myself, and it's snowing. And I had my campfire going and then after like two months with no guests on property, the wildlife started coming out more. So I had like a nighttime bear outside my cabin. And there was a cougar that would walk up and down in the middle of the night. And it was a point where it didn't Katie remembers that. Well, we're I just had to embrace the chaos that was going on, you know. So in a time that seems really tough. It was also had some really beautiful moments.
Nicole's Nichols right part of the shining part I Am Legend
I love that. Oh, it sounds like you guys really have some colorful experiences there and also like some really, really great team camaraderie, which is so lovely and like the sort of environment where people are willing to pitch in and do their share to like, get everything going and make the company you know, chug along. So I love that. Great. Does anyone have any sort of last questions in our last 12 minutes here? Or Katie or Jason, if any of you are thinking of something that we haven't touched on maybe that we want to get to?
So Gurinder had a question just about the name that I think was a good question if he wants to come ask that. Oh, perfect. I
missed that one. Thank you, Jenna. Yeah. No, thank you.
I'm from India and I'm, I really believe in every name has something meaning. And I'm really excited to know what what is the theory behind this name? autocamp and story I would like to thank Jana for that. Yeah.
Yeah, I am gonna be really honest. I know how we came to be autocamp But I don't know why we chose auto campus the
name Yeah, I
have a theory but I don't know that either.
I think I'm gonna have to ask Neil or CEO and founder and then circle back to Jenna and Eileen.
I mean, that's such a beautiful sentiment, though, isn't it? But the name the meaning behind the etymology is so it could be so beautiful and I'm sure it is. So I really liked that question a lot. And you might get it again. So. I mean, I have a feeling that the camping being in air streams, I mean, but they're not really autos, but they're sort of autos. Well, part of part of
our mission is to have a place for people to get outdoors in camp in a place that you can drive from a city. So a close drive to get to camp. So that's that's how I assumed but I don't think I've ever talked about it with anyone. Yeah,
I was automatic camping because we do provide an experience where people literally have no idea walking and searching.
Well, it's funny that this is the question that stumped everybody out of everything. Right. I mean, I would find out right? Yeah, it seems like an easy one to get to so that's that's the good news. Um, do you accept or do you help folks from other countries in the US come work with you because Canada, India, obviously we have some international folks here.
Yeah, good question. So we actually just started looking into kind of HTV sponsorship and, and how we can do that we hosted our first j one team members last summer in Cape Cod. But we had two that were able to get their visas despite COVID So that was really fun to have them come out and we have I think seven coming this summer indicated. Cool. So
very cool. And then I mean, Ali had a great question like, What what did we not get to talk about today that you wanted to say? Um,
let's say I think you guys a you did a really good job of bringing up a lot of different topics and been able to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time. So thank you, Elliot Jenner for doing that. And I think overall, you know, hopefully this came through but we work with a really passionate group of people. And a group of people they're just honestly very fun and inspiring. I think. I came from a boutique hotel background and spent 14 years in my last company and I can say without a doubt, autocamp will be the one I retire from. Yeah, Job Hopper. It's because of the people and it's just so inspiring to go on property and spend time with Jason and his team and just see what people are doing and how much they care for our guests and each other and as an HR leader, especially it's just so gratifying to see
very often celebrated, do everything you can to keep it that way. Yeah. There's anything you want to add Oh, no,
this was really fun. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, and good questions and good conversation and now I need to learn something about
Well, it's great because you know, we tried to make the sessions similar to when we're talking to a company Allie and I will always speak with outdoor brands and almost in a way of vet them and how and understand ourselves what they're like to work with before we're comfortable and confident telling our community about them. So we love that, you know, we we like to learn so much from you and that you were willing to talk to the community about it too, and, you know, answer the real time questions. So I actually am coming out of this. I really thought autocamp was more of a seasonal workplace. And I think that you can be that for a lot of people but you are much more of a permanent situation for folks than I thought you were. So it's really good to hear that folks. Come there and then they can grow a career and they just love working with the team and there's so much potential for them to try something new and to figure out which spot in the company makes most sense for them.
About hospitality as a career choice, or marketplace in the US, about 6 million rooms take only about 15% or so or luxury. So the majority of the properties in the US are low. Market big market. We're kind of a luxury outdoor brand. Yeah, you know so and we don't fit in a regular box all that well. But if you if you have a if you'd have the desire for hospitality is as fatality as a career, a few years at and I don't care, you can easily walk into a bar to a hill four seasons or anywhere shown the picture and they know you're qualified to work there.
Yeah, it might ruin you for those experiences though. They sound less interesting.
From us to a Motel Six it's gonna not
well, we will
share your information. Wow, there was a lot of people that wanted to make it but could not join us live for one reason or another but they're excited to catch the replay and they're excited to reach out so we'll share your contact information. Mike will especially share your LinkedIn since you mentioned that's how you like to be gotten in touch with and everyone can sort of follow up with their conversations. There is an excellent little video on the autocamp page on the base camp site as well, which gives a lot of insight. I thought it was very, very well done. So good job there. And yep, so we'll be sending around an email with with how to get in touch with you. And if there are more questions after this session, folks can ask you directly Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for having us.
We'll have this conversation also on the website as well. So after, you know, after a little bit of time, Jenna, we'll get it up there and then you can revisit it at any point. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Thank you. All
right. Thanks for answering all the questions. Thanks for coming, everyone and our next session. Well, one of our next sessions coming up will be with Cotopaxi so that will be very fun as well. And if you have any questions for Basecamp we are the outdoor industry.com There's lots of contact or just hello at the outdoor industry or we are the industry.com or just find us on Facebook in the community.
And if you're at a bar next week or in Denver, please stop by and see us at Outdoor Retailer we will be there. You don't need a badge. We'll be in the atrium area when you first walk in on Wednesday. So stop by. Thanks, everyone. Bye, everyone. Thank you. Thanks, bye
