When staffing season opens, applicants start flowing in fast. The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is where you organize that flow — from first interest all the way to a decision, with automations doing some of the legwork for you.
Every submission from your Staff Interest Form or Staff Application lands here automatically, ready for you to sort, review, and act on.
Before diving in, make sure your Staff Interest Form and/or Staff Application are set up and live. The ATS only populates from those form submissions — there's no way to manually add applicants. Once candidates start coming in, you're ready to build your pipeline structure.
The ATS is one of three staffing tools in Campminder. When you're ready to assign roles and make official hires, you'll move into Staff Placement — which picks up exactly where the ATS leaves off.
In this article, you'll learn how to:
Create pipelines and configure stages and statuses to match your hiring process
Set up automations that assign, notify, or email your team or the applicant the moment an applicant moves
Assign attributes to pipelines so applicants route automatically
Filter and batch move applicants to keep your pipeline organized
Close out pipelines cleanly at the end of the season
Video Walkthrough
Pipelines: Set Up Your Hiring Structure
Pipelines are the foundation of the ATS. Each pipeline represents a hiring flow for a specific staff group — Counselors, Lifeguards, Nurses, Returning Staff, and so on.
Video Walkthrough
To create a pipeline:
Navigate to Staff > Applicant Tracking System.
Click + Create New Pipeline in the upper right.
Give your pipeline a clear, descriptive name (e.g., Lifeguard Applicants, Nurse Applicants).
Click the three vertical dots next to the green Active button to set a pipeline as your default.
📋 Note: You must have one pipeline set as the default. It acts as a catch-all for any applicant who doesn't match a seasonal pipeline. The default pipeline cannot be assigned a season.
💡Tip: If you only need one pipeline, you don't have to build a new one — rename and repurpose your default pipeline's stages, statuses, and automations to fit your process instead.
💡Tip: click on the gif below to enlarge.
💡 Tip: Start with a general default pipeline — like New Staff — and build out additional pipelines for specialized roles as your process matures.
Season Assignment: Route Applicants Automatically
If you're accepting applications for a future season while your current season is still active, seasonal pipelines route applicants to the right place automatically — no manual sorting needed.
How it works:
Applicants are matched to a pipeline by the season on their application
If a match is found → they route to that seasonal pipeline
If no match is found → they route to the default pipeline
To assign a season to a pipeline:
Open your pipeline list and click the three vertical dots on the right side of the pipeline row. Select Settings from the dropdown.
Use Attributes to control which applicants flow into this pipeline. Locate and select the season to assign (for example, 2026).
📋Note: default pipelines cannot have attributes.
Click Save. A season badge appears next to the pipeline name, confirming the assignment.
To remove a season, return to Settings and deselect the assigned season.
💡Tip: click on the gif below to enlarge
📋 Note: You cannot assign the same season to more than one pipeline. The system will prevent duplicates. Current-season applicants are not affected — they continue flowing into whichever pipeline was already handling them.
Running multiple seasons at once? Create a dedicated pipeline per open season:
Pipeline | Season assigned |
2025 Chaperones | 2025 |
2026 Chaperones | 2026 |
Default Pipeline | (none — catch-all) |
🏕️ Camps in Action
A hiring coordinator was still finalizing a handful of 2025 chaperone hires in early spring when 2026 applications started arriving.
Instead of manually checking each new applicant's season and dragging them into the right spot, she created a "2026 Chaperones" pipeline and assigned it the 2026 season, leaving her existing "2025 Chaperones" pipeline tagged to 2025. From that point on, every new application sorted itself into the right year automatically — and her original 2025 applicants stayed exactly where she'd left them, untouched by the change.
🎯 Try it now: Go to Staff > Staff Hiring and create your first pipeline. Give it a real name you'd use this season and confirm your default is set. Come back when it's saved.
Kanban and Table Views
See your whole pipeline at once in Kanban view, or drop into a single stage in Table view — pick whichever fits how you work in the moment.
Open a pipeline and locate the view toggle in the upper right.
Choose Kanban to see every stage side by side, or Table to see one list you can filter down.
💡 Tip: Kanban gives you the full picture across every stage at once, and filtering there won't push the rest of the page down. Table is the faster path when you want to focus on just one stage.
💡Tip: click on gif below to enlarge
In Table view, filter by a single stage to recreate a focused, one-list view.
Navigate to the Columns button at the far right of your pipeline table.
Deselect any columns you don't need for each stage, then click Save Changes.
💡 Tip: Configuring columns per stage means your table shows exactly what matters in that phase — no clutter from fields that don't apply yet.
🎯 Try it now: Open a pipeline, switch to Kanban to see every stage at once, then switch back to Table and filter down to a single stage. Come back once you've tried both.
Stages and Statuses: Map Out Your Hiring Process
Within each pipeline, stages represent the key phases of your hiring process. Statuses live inside each stage and act like a checklist — tracking specific milestones an applicant needs to complete before moving on.
Every new pipeline comes preloaded with four default stages: Review, Interview, Offer, and Decline. These are a starting point — rename, remove, or add stages to match how your camp actually hires.
Example for a nurse pipeline: Review > Reference Check > Interview > Health Certification > Offer > Decline
To add or edit a stage:
Navigate to a pipeline and click the three vertical dots at the end of the row and select Settings.
Click + Add Stage on the right side.
Enter a Stage Name and choose a Stage Type: Review, Interview, Offer, or Decline.
To edit or delete an existing stage, click the vertical dots next to the stage name.
Drag and drop stages using the handle above each one to reorder them.
💡Tip: click on the gif below to enlarge
📋 Note: The Decline stage type includes an optional note field — use it to record why someone was declined or flag follow-up details.
To add statuses within a stage:
Select the Pipeline Settings gear icon at the top right.
Click Add Status within the stage you want to add to and enter a name (e.g., Interview Scheduled, Background Check Sent).
Drag statuses into your preferred order within the stage.
💡 Tip: Statuses in the ATS are for tracking purposes only. Marking someone as "Hired" here does not update their record in Campminder. Official hiring happens in Staff Placement.
🎯 Try it now: Open one of your pipelines, go toPipeline Settings and customize at least one stage name to reflect your camp's actual hiring language. Add one status inside it. Come back when it's done.
Automations: Automate Actions on Stage Change
Automations act the moment an applicant enters a stage — assigning a team member, sending an email, or firing a notification without you lifting a finger. Every pipeline comes with a starter automation already set up on its default stages, so you can see how one works before building your own.
Video Walkthrough
To create an automation:
Navigate to a pipeline and click + Add Automation in the stage where you want the automation to run.
Click Create Automation on the rule that's currently enabled.
Select the automation to make edits, and refine it to your specific needs.
Example: Example: you can edit the automation for when an applicant enters the Interview stage to send an email to the assigned user, notifying them immediately when someone they're going to interview has moved from Review into Interview.
📋 Note: The pipeline and stage are pre-filled based on where you clicked in — you're always building an automation to run in the exact stage you're viewing.
When you open an automation to refine it, you'll see three sections:
Name and Description — Name is required; Description is optional and explains what the rule does for your team.
When — choose what triggers the automation: Applicant Assigned, Applicant Unassigned, Applicant Applied, or Applicant Stage Changed.
If — set the conditions that must be true for the automation to run. Pipeline and To Stage are pre-filled based on where you clicked in — click Add Condition for more, and combine them with AND/OR.
Then — add your action, covered in the steps below.
To add an action to your automation:
Click + Add Action and choose one: Assign User, Send Email, or Notify Users.
For Assign User, select the team member who should be assigned the moment an applicant drops into this stage.
For Notify Users, select who should receive a notification when the automation runs.
For Send Email, select or create an email template, then complete the sender details — From Camp Name and From Email are both required.
💡 Tip: Use merge fields like Applicant First Name and Applicant Last Name in your email template to personalize it automatically for each recipient.
Add a recipient strategy to choose who receives the email: Send to Applicant, Assigned User, Specific Users, or Additional Emails (enter an address manually).
Stack more than one action on a single automation — for example, assign a user and notify them in the same automation.
Click Save Automation to save.
📋 Note: If a new automation conflicts with one that already exists on that stage, you'll see a warning that both rules apply and one may silently override the other. The earlier rule always wins. You can save anyway, but check your existing automations first so you know which one will actually run.
🎯 Try it now: Open your default pipeline, click into a stage, and add one automation with an Assign User action. Come back once you've saved it and can see it listed on the stage.
Filtering and Moving Applicants: Work Your Pipeline
When applicants are flowing in, filtering helps you surface who needs attention. Batch moving lets you act on groups of candidates at once — no clicking one by one.
To filter applicants:
Navigate to the pipeline you want to view from the Hiring section.
Use the row along the top to filter by stage, status, or other criteria — or click directly into a stage to view applicants within it.
Use the more button on the right for deeper criteria: submission source, Status in UPR, Certifications...ect.
To batch move applicants:
When in the Table View, select the applicants you want to move — or click the top checkbox to select all.
Select at the top the Pipeline you want to move applicants to, and a stage.
Click Move.
💡Tip: click on the gif below to enlarge
🏕️ Camps in Action
A hiring manager for a large overnight camp had 200 returning staff applications come in within the first week.
She filtered the default pipeline by submission source and status in UPR to separate returning applicants from new ones, then used batch move to drop them all into a dedicated Returning Staff pipeline in a single action. From there, a different team member took ownership of that pipeline entirely — no crossover, no confusion.
🎯 Try it now: Go to your default pipeline, filter by one status or stage, select a group of applicants, and practice a batch move — even if just between stages. Come back when you've done it.
Updating Individual Applicants: Moving Through Stages
As applicants progress, you'll update them one by one through their pipeline stages.
📋 Note: Stage and status updates in the ATS are for tracking only. They do not update the applicant's record in Campminder. Official hiring happens in Staff Placement — that's where position assignment and status changes are made official.
Select an individual applicant within a pipeline.
Use the dropdown at the top of their card to edit the stage.
Within the stage, choose a status from the dropdown to reflect their current step (e.g., Interview Scheduled, Background Check Sent).
Once they've completed a stage, move them to the next one using the same dropdown.
End-of-Season Cleanup: Close Out Your Pipelines
When your hiring season wraps, a few minutes of cleanup preserves this year's picture and sets up next year.
Leave every applicant exactly where they are. The value of last season's pipeline is seeing who sat where and how far each person got.
For each pipeline you want to run again:
Open the pipeline's ellipsis (3 dot) menu and select Duplicate. The copy carries over your stages and statuses, so you aren't rebuilding what you spent the season setting up.
Select Archive on the original. It moves to your Archive section with every applicant still in the stage they ended in.
Repeat for each pipeline. Do the same for your rosters in Placement. You can do this whenever hiring wraps. You don't have to wait to close your season in Campminder.
📋Note: If a pipeline didn't work well this year, this is a good moment to take stock. Skip the duplication and just archive it, then build fresh.
💡 Tip: Think of archiving like filing away last summer's folders. It's not gone, just off your desk. It's the same instinct as keeping last year's hiring spreadsheet in its own folder.
🎯 Try it now: At the close of your next hiring cycle, archive one completed pipeline and rename it to include the season year. Come back and check it off.
Before you move on, check yourself:
Can you explain the difference between a pipeline, a stage, and a status — and when to use each?
Do you know how seasonal pipeline routing works and when to use the default pipeline?
Have you set up at least one automation and confirmed which action it triggers?
Could you filter your pipeline and batch move a group of applicants right now?
Ready for the next step?
Staff Placement: Assign Positions, Place Staff, and Hire — where your ATS candidates become official hires with assigned positions
Staff: The Hiring Process — the record-level hiring steps that finalize a hire in Campminder
Get to Know: The Staff Interest Form — set up the form that feeds applicants into this pipeline