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:
Control who can access the staffing tools
Create pipelines and configure stages and statuses to match your hiring process
Assign attributes to pipelines so applicants route automatically
Find where to set up automations that run when an applicant moves
Video Walkthrough
Permissions: Control Who Can Access Staffing Tools
Staffing permissions are all-or-nothing. A user either has full access to Staff Placement and the ATS, or none at all.
Navigate to Staff > Applicant Tracking System > Hiring Pipelines.
Click the Settings icon in the upper right to open the User Permissions panel.
Find any user and check the box to enable access, or uncheck it to remove access.
📋 Note: Users can update permissions for others, but not for themselves.
To add a new user and grant access:
Navigate to Admin > Logins and Permissions > Users.
Create the user account. They'll appear in the staffing permissions list automatically.
If the new user is a User Admin, staffing access is enabled automatically. For all other users, toggle access on manually using the lock icon steps above.
📖 Related: Add New Users: User Groups and Permissions
🎯 Try it now: Go to Staff > Applicant Tracking System, open the settings icon, and confirm the right people on your team have access toggled on. Come back when you've checked it.
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 |
2026 Chaperones | 2026 |
2027 Chaperones | 2027 |
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 > Applicant Tracking System 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.
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, you can 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 gear icon.
Click + Add Stage on the right side.
Enter a Stage Name.
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
💡Tip: Use the optional note field 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 to Pipeline 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:
Open a pipeline and select the gear icon.
Select Automations on this pipeline.
Review the starter automation, or add a new one.
📋Note: Staff Automations has its own dedicated article. Visit this page to learn how to build an automation, select or create a template, and verify it ran successfully.
🎯 Try it now: Open your default pipeline, go to Automations on this pipeline, and open the starter automation to see how When, If, and Then fit together. Come back once you’ve found it.
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?
Do you know where to find the automations for a pipeline?
Ready for the next step?
Applicant Tracking System: Filter, Move, and Track Applicants view, filter, and move applicants, see Calendly interviews, and close out your season
Staff Hiring Automations: Assign, Notify, Email, and Text as Applicants Move build rules, templates, and check what ran
Staff Placement: Assign Positions, Place Staff, and Hire where your ATS candidates become official hires with assigned positions
Get to Know: The Staff Interest Form set up the form that feeds applicants into this pipeline