You’ve decided you want to look into being a ski instructor. You’ve seen a few ski movies, read a few articles about life in the mountains or maybe have a friend tempting you to inquire.
Before you try to decide which resort(s) you want to work at you need to consider if you really want to be an instructor. Because there are many other mountain jobs that could be better for you.
Ski patrol, chairlift operation, guest services, snowmaking, food and beverage services. All offering different schedules, social and technical engagement levels, training models and job availability.
In the United States, ski instructor job availability is extremely high in most places. We are talking about the traditional group and private lesson instructor jobs here and not the discipline specific coaching jobs. But there is a catch; your first few years as an instructor will be a full time commitment with part time hours and you will spend the majority of your days on the magic carpet. Ski school hiring staff are aware of the tedious career curve that comes with becoming a ski instructor. If you are thinking of doing this long term or as a career, you must learn to love spreading passion for the sport to newcomers, it's what keeps the sport alive. There is a whole market for experienced instructors specializing in beginner lessons, some mountains even pay first timer instructors a bonus.
As the nation develops and enforces certain standards for ski instructors, good teaching becomes more important than raw skiing ability. Most instructors don’t rip deep carves or do backflips, they ski with proper technique and can go anywhere on the mountain. If you pop backflips don’t worry, your attitude will be appreciated. Diversity and all that. When I started I was neither a good skier or a good teacher. I had bad grades most of my schooling career. I didn’t know how my life would pan out. All that was clear to me was; if I’m going to do as poorly in life as I did in school I will need to at least be doing what I love. And my best chance to turn around is to find a career in which I can educate myself at my own pace, choose to study and train by myself or in a group, have a mobile and flexible lifestyle, and work in a hands-on environment with high engagement standards. How well you did in school has little to do with your potential as a ski instructor. In fact, many people start teaching after 4-5 years of university. Type-A instructors are weird and stuck up, but they still get the job done. As a 15 year old my perceived competence was low. so was my confidence. Ski school gave me time to develop. These are the attributes that let me decide ski school was right for me.
I didn’t have the stomach or maturity for ski patrol and wanted to ski too much to be a lifty. I was not confident enough to be a groomer or on park crew, too restless to be in guest services, not disciplined enough to be in food and beverage services. I never met anyone who could relate to the type of child I was but my first mentors in ski school understood who I was when I first showed up. Odds are some old timer will get you up to speed in your first few seasons no matter where you are from or when you start.
It's almost like a ski school ethos is built to attract a highly diverse set of minds. The experienced staff of a small ski school works up a unique culture of educational responsibility. Some kind of extreme liability; they truly want this job to be for everyone. That's how they manage to have a workforce that can represent every snowsports consumer. Many mistakes that can be made by a new instructor can be traced back to lack of training. Most problems that arise during or after a lesson can be summed up to “ instructor wasn’t told or shown at all or well enough” If you show up to ski school with intent to learn, the only thing left in your way is you, get out of your own way, ski powder, meet people and the more fun you have, the more passion you will transmit to your students.
If you are still reading this you are ready to learn about every ski school's greatest asset, the locker room. This is where you can find an immeasurable amount of experience and knowledge. Every instructor has to boot up in the morning, this is your chance to ambush as many geezers as you can with your dumb questions and fun stories. You can learn more about a place and its community in a ski school locker room than at any local bar. Odds are most instructors have been involved with the community since long before they worked for the mountain. And those who haven't, have traveled far and wide before ending up in that locker room. You will meet fathers and mothers, half retired tech wizards, college professors, professional skiers and entrepreneurs. Some are career instructors, some don’t even love skiing and just do it as a side gig. The diversity that can be found even just within a bunch of musty 45 years old white upper middle class skiers and snowboarders is astounding. (You start to grow younger after 45. 45 is the oldest someone can be, unless you forgot to have fun while chasing that degree, in that case your maximum age is more like 49).
Once you are taking full advantage of the locker room there is only one thing that can get in your way, it's about as tall as you, as ugly as you, you see it in the mirror every morning, it's you, get out of your way. You will meet the dark figures of the locker room too. Those who aren’t here to stay, they show up as locals, weathered travelers and everything in between. The half committed false shepherds befriend new employees from out of town and tempt them with late nights out and alternative, non health related activities. Let's talk about drug use. You didn’t click on my blog to be told drugs are bad and instructors never do them. Drugs are awesome and lots of instructors do them. Your first few years as an instructor, you may feel like you are not being used to your maximum capacity at work. You should be filling that less busy work time with as much studying and socializing as possible. I’ll do you a favor and be vague so you can decide for yourself. Your first 2 or 3 seasons as a ski instructor dictate a few things; whether or not you travel the world and ski year round, whether or not you work for an all inclusive resort that feeds you and shelters you for free, dumping you back into the real world with $20,000 in your pocket, whether or not you build a private lesson client base that you can live off of, whether or not you are starting to build the skills you need to be one day self employed in an extremely competitive entrepreneurial environment. Keep in mind, most middle aged instructors aren’t there by chance, they had past careers in industries with much, much higher stakes. These instructors are so confident and competent they are daring to live off a passion. It's as hard as it sounds for them, and for you as well. Don’t let that get you down, your youth and starting young is your greatest asset, time is on your side when you are 16-20 and if you dedicate your time you will be certified sexy and unforgettable.
Now you understand that doing this long term is as easy as getting out of your own way. Let's talk about how to actually rise to the top.
Certifications:
There are many certification pathways. Your region may have special accreditation as well. Do at least 2 levels of your primary interest. Keep an open mind about pathways that sound different, you have time to do it all.
National categories:
Alpine skiing
Children's Specialist
Snowboarding
Nordic(Cross-Country)
Telemark
Adaptive
Freestyle
At the very least do your main discipline, it will be either skiing, snowboarding, nordic or telemark. Once you have a level one certification, go straight for children's specialist 1. It's relatively easy and very interesting. Children's Specialist 1 acts as a direct job difficulty decreaser. Once you've done it, you will never work as hard to facilitate fun ever again.
If building your certification portfolio is like building a sail, mentor relationships and meaningful connections will be your wind. If you have any say in locker assignments, try to get in on the elder’s corner. So often I see all the J1 and Gen-X instructors all on one side of the locker room with elders on the other. You can talk to other people that are your age and certification level in employee housing, training and on days off. At first, a good locker assignment will get you close to potential mentors and at the very least lets you overhear an effective lesson recap now and again. If your lockers are assigned by a manager you need to urge them to move you closer to the fully certified veterans. If a locker in the veterans corner opens up mid season, ask a manager to give it to you. Invest in proximity.
Have a social goal for the season. For example: Ask 1000 questions. Ask 25 levels 3s what their life looked like from age 20-30. Inquire about company benefits. Inquire about certification scholarships. I personally like the “ask 1000 questions” season goal, it's not meant to be taken literally. When paired with proportional use of ears and mouth, you can really get somewhere with these goals, maybe even try 80% listening and 20% talking or less.
Have a guest experience focus, weekly or monthly, cycle and stack them. For example: Call private lesson client the night before the lesson. Help the first guest of the day 3 or 4 times a week. Offer to help carry something for a guest 7 times a day. Making the guest feel important is not only important for consumer retention, it gives you a chance to learn your job wholly.
Most ski schools match instructors with clients based on a priority list. Highly certified instructors teach higher skilled students and more private lessons, they get more work too. Uncertified instructors get beginner lessons, sent home or have to teach lessons on the powder days when certified instructors “backline”.
Supervisors may ask you if you want to work, others don’t have to say yes but you absolutely do. Backlining is when you tell your boss you don’t want to work and you are last to receive a lesson if at all. There is a catch, if you do get a lesson, it's a beginner lesson. I know some instructors that ski a lot of powder and teach a lot of beginner lessons, if you don’t think that's fair, get certified.
Beyond the priority list is your standing with supervisors and managers. At some schools it doesn’t apply to your day to day and whether your boss likes you or not doesn’t affect how much work you get. At other schools, it trumps the priority list. You can’t know a ski school’s priority culture until you’ve worked there and it's not important enough to help you decide where to work.
Picking a mountain is simple, listen to your heart. If your research on a particular mountain tells you it's too corporate for you then it probably is. My favorite metric to judge whether a resort is right for me is by estimating density. If a resort is close to a big city, has trams and high speed chairs, is known for being expensive and people go anyway, it's probably a dense resort. If the housing market is inflated, it's dense. Look at promotional content on Youtube. PeakRankings is a Youtube channel that reviews resorts from the consumer perspective and may offer insight on pros and cons. Housing is a crisis in small mountain communities. Many ski resorts offer employee housing to achieve full employment. Employee housing can be cramped and inconvenient. Try finding a roommate on Facebook housing groups and requesting a room with them. This reduces the odds of living with someone coming from a past so unstable they destabilize the people around them. For me those odds are about 80% for years in employee housing without requested roommates. Cheap non employee housing starts at roughly $750/month in late summer and goes up to about $1200 for people moving in December. If you can, try getting a job at a restaurant or really anywhere, get onsite and start looking for potential roommates.
If you are considering a career in snowsports education, know that taking it seriously will put you ahead of about 40% of instructors right off the bat. Pick a resort that gives you incentives to take the job seriously. If you want to work at a certain ski school for only 1 year, give yourself a reason to do your very best. Most ski school employees have summer jobs, own businesses etc. and building meaningful connections can help you find work close to the mountain even if being a ski instructor isn’t for you. You have to give those people your most genuine engagement if you want to put your foot in that kind of door. Your goals don’t all have to be specific or quantifiable, you don’t have to literally ask 1000 questions. Failing exams happens, if you think you failed or messed up you need to continue to do your best because the potency of your evaluation needs to be accurate for you to progress. If you decide that doing this long term is for you, do your best to show up to your local spring conventions. And most importantly, remember to ski for yourself, apply for the free ski pass and supervisors expect you to use it.
