She was a recent college graduate with a combined degree in business management and hospitality. She’d skied all her life and wanted nothing more than to build a life in the ski industry. She was willing to start out at entry level and learn her way up to management, where she’d settle and spend a lifetime.

He was a successful MBA who’d worked in big cities at well-known corporations. But his heart was in the mountains and so, one summer, he decided to make the big move. He quit his high paying job, packed his bags and took a management job at a mountain resort where, despite making less and working more, he knew he’d made the right choice.

Okay, we’re talking fantasy here. For resort recruiters, these stories are almost employment porn. Finding—and retaining—good, long-term management in this industry is one of the top challenges. And this year, with Congress doing who knows what with H2B visas, the hunt is all the more elusive.

“I don’t think this is going to get any easier with a bad economy,” says Jacques Pelletier, owner of Mountain Hire, a recruitment firm specializing in placing talent at mountain resorts. “It is true that more peoples’ jobs are at risk, so they are going to be more flexible. But in most cases, they still have a family to support [and therefore cannot afford to move into the ski industry]. They say ‘this sounds great,’ and then I throw out the pay and right away it’s ‘Oh, I cannot afford that.’”

And then there’s the climate. Says Pelletier, “It’s easier to pull people out of mountains to work in other [destination industries], but draining them in the other direction is almost impossible.”

So what’s a resort company to do? While it may seem simple—(“Good companies pay well, recognize employees and get them to stay,” says Pelletier)—across the industry, resorts large and small seem to have their own take.


Resort Strategies
At Loon Mountain, N.H., it’s all about preparation and, in the end, knowing when to take a person on, and knowing when to turn away a smart, successful person (for their own good).

“We have quite an interview pro-cess,” says Ruth Berkeley, Loon’s director of human resources. “As painful as it is and as much as you want to hurry up and get someone in there, we take our time.”

The process involves a careful crafting of the job description before the job is advertised. “We come up with a plan for each position,” she says. “We do our homework as a team [her department, the GM, and the employees of the short-handed department] so we know the job clearly and what it means not only to us, but to the person who might take it. In the end the job has to be good on both sides.”

Deer Valley, Utah, has a similar approach. “There is little point to doing a good job recruiting if you are not going to do a good job of making the employment experience a positive one,” says Deer Valley marketing director Coleen Reardon. “We do a lot of succession planning and promoting from within, and do it in a way that employees feel confident about their future.”

At Okemo, Vt., vice president of human resources Crystal Stokarski has an especially tough task. “There are not a lot of people relocating to work in Vermont,” she says. Vermont exports a high number of youths, and ranks second oldest in the nation in the average age of its workers. Even with those who love mountain life, she says, “People leave to be in the West under the blue sky.”

So Okemo has worked to do two things: let the mountain resort world know what a great place Okemo is and develop a program to lure—and grow—its own long-term talent. That program, called “Manager in Training,” debuted two seasons ago. The 10-month paid job gives one person the chance to train across the board at Okemo, in every department and at almost every level. Applications flew in (“they tended to be recent college graduates,” Stokarski says) and the results speak for themselves: both chosen candidates stayed on to make a living at Okemo once their program was complete.

The program makes sense. Candidates, hungry to both get their feet wet and to feel out many mountain departments to find their niche, were lured to take the role. Once there, seeing the Okemo employee culture as a positive one, they were convinced to stay.

That culture, says Stokarski, is vital to their success as employers. “A resort is like a small town,” she says. “To be successful in a resort, or to fit in in a small town, you have to know everyone and how everyone fits in. This program helps future managers do just that.”


Fishing Holes
Even with innovative programs, resorts face a big question: where to go to find the right person for the job? There are options. Recruitment firms like Mountain Hire can give resorts a database and Rolodex that they just don’t have themselves, for example.

The top ski resort management schools in the country—UMaine, Lyndon State, Sierra Nevada, Gogebic Community College, Colorado Mountain College, Selkirk Community College in B.C.—provide another search route. But merely reaching out is not enough. Gogebic director of ski area management Jim Vanderspoel says that competition for his students has become fierce—they average a 98 percent placement rate for graduates. Newly minted resort workers can be choosy, despite a poor economy.

“Fifteen, 20 years ago, it was ‘we have an opening in snowmaking or grooming,’ and the kids would have to jump at it,” says Vanderspoel. “Now, they can start out just about anywhere they want to.” But he is quick to point out his pool of potential employees is unique: they’ve already made the decision that mountain life is for them.

A bigger challenge, he thinks, is getting other employee pools to think the same way. “A kid could make just as much flipping a hamburger as they can [starting out in the ski industry],” he says. “It takes a unique person for these jobs. You have to love this industry.”

But, says Loon’s Berkeley, there is an equally shiny flip side to that coin. “Sometimes we forget what we have here,” she says. “The beauty, the peace, the skiing privileges for them and for their families, the sense of community; our industry has a lot to offer. When we do find the right person, it can be pretty captivating.” That’s why more and more resorts are taking part in college fairs where they can introduce the concept of mountain resort life to potential employees who have not yet considered it.

The search for good, long-term quality management also has meant resorts looking to places and tactics they may not have in the past. Bob Roberts of the California Ski Industry Association says not to overlook the newer but now obvious. “One of our best new managers who has really worked out we found from a Craigslist search,” he says.


Throwing a Wider Net
Resorts can also explore options around equal opportunity employment. Mary Williams, president of Youth Enrichment Services of Boston, which pumps thousands of new skiers and riders into the sport each year, suggests looking for talent in places where that talent tends to look—such as diversity employment firms and fairs (Boston, for one city, holds a large one annually) and within their social and sports organizations, such as the National Brotherhood of Skiers.

Development is another approach. Vail Resorts debuted a local scholarship program this year. Any high school graduate living in the surrounding counties (including current entry-level Vail employees) can apply for a $10,000-a-year scholarship to major in ski area management at Colorado Mountain College. The program also includes a paid internship at a Vail resort.

“We knew we had not been looking at the market the right way,” Vail spokeswoman Kara Heide says. “To get people to stay, you need to work well with them from the start, and grow them in a positive way. We believe this program will do that.” Vail is so confident, in fact, it already plans to add a second scholarship program in Breckenridge.

And while she says the main goal is to bring in diverse managers (“This program is not training lift operators, it’s training leaders”), she doesn’t hesitate to say they hope it positively impacts another bottom line: skier visits.

“When you provide management opportunities to a diverse population, you are bringing in a whole new perspective of an entire culture,” she notes. “New cultures equal new perspectives, and those new perspectives open up new markets to you.”

Rob Seward of LatPro.com, an industry leader in diversity recruitment, seconds that. He points out that a Latino manager is going to bring the thought process and likes and dislikes of his or her community to the table throughout the organization. “It gives you insight to attract people from their culture,” he says. “Companies are starting to realize that really, this has nothing to do with quota. It’s just really good business.”

How to recruit a diverse team is the challenge. Seward suggests sites that focus on diverse employees, like his—which gets more than 300,000 visitors, 60 percent of which are college educated or higher. While most will not have exact ski resort experience, he says, “a ski resort is a little community of its own and needs all kinds of expertise.”

He also suggests resorts partner more with area associations like the Chamber of Commerce, citing Salt Lake City, where the population of minorities now tops 20 percent. It may take some extra effort, but even flatland cities can be a source of future managers. “Resorts may want to consider investing in relocation for prospective management. It could really pay off,” Seward says.

There are, in fact, many places to turn for future employees. “We are really just starting to try to figure it all out now,” Berkeley says. “No doubt, this will be an interesting, challenging year.”

Aren’t they all?