Hiring leaders

They sit in a high chair wearing a swimsuit, sunglasses and a liberal amount of sunscreen. Hats are optional, but a dose of zinc oxide for a chronically sunburned nose can be a necessity.

They start as young as 15 years old and they shoulder responsibility uncommon for their age.

They’re lifeguards and they’re trained to save lives. It’s their job to prevent the kinds of accidents that would force them to do just that.

As summer jobs go, working as a lifeguard is a good one.

“People kid me about my job,” said Katie Hawkins, 18, who’s in her third summer as a lifeguard at Valley Mission Pool. “They kid me about it, ‘Oh, all you do is sit on your butt all day and get paid.’ But there’s a lot more to it than that. You have to pay attention to what’s going on around you and you have to deal with an angry parent once in a while.

“But it’s a lot of fun. I enjoy it.”

It’s the fun part of the job that colors popular perception of lifeguards – coupled with television series like “Baywatch.”

“That’s one of the things we really hit on in our classes and when we go about hiring lifeguards,” Spokane Valley YMCA aquatics coordinator Jeff Polello said. “This is one of the most fun jobs you can have. It’s inherently fun. But there’s more responsibility to this job than anyone ever entrusts to a 16-year-old anywhere else.

“One of the big things we look for is the responsibility factor. It sounds like a great, fun job because you get to hang around the pool, but the kids we’re looking for are the ones who always remember that this is a responsibility-laden job. If they’re not doing their job well, we can have some serious consequences.”

For the city of Spokane, a lifeguard can expect to make between $8.50 and $10 per hour, depending on experience. More if they teach swim classes.

Lifeguards go through a certification process, usually through the American Red Cross. They must be able to swim 500 yards without stopping and be able to retrieve a heavy object from the bottom of the pool – fitting requirements for someone who may need to perform a water rescue at some point.

But more than that, lifeguards must have a specific personality type.

“We’re looking for the kind of person who can take charge,” said Sarah Ranson, aquatics supervisor for Spokane Parks and Recreation Department. “We don’t want someone who’s going to hang back and be a follower. We need a leader.”

In the interview process, Ranson presents specific situations a lifeguard might face and asks how the applicant would respond.

“I ask questions like, ‘How would you approach an adult who’s breaking the rules?’ ” she said. “We’re looking for how quickly they think on their feet and how they think through a process. We want to see their ability to take charge.

“Our pools have very few adults at them. You see kids at our pools trying to do their own thing, ‘My mom’s not here, you can’t tell me what to do.’ Or we get adults at the pool who think that, because they’re an adult, they can do whatever they want to at the pool. It really takes a strong person to be able to discipline someone older than they are and to correct them.”

It was intimidating the first time she had to face an angry parent as a 15-year-old lifeguard, said Hawkins, a recent graduate of University High School.

“That’s an understatement,” she said. “Your first instinct is to get other lifeguards and a supervisor to back you up, but then you think to yourself, ‘No, wait, this is my job and I have to do this myself.’ You’re hired to do a job and you have to accept that responsibility.”

There are benefits to the job that go far beyond a good tan and a better paycheck.

“It looks extremely good on a résumè,” Ranson said. “These kids are in charge of the lives of all the people at the pool, and they have to be able to make quick decisions and they have to make correct decisions. Not a lot of kids 15 years old are allowed to have that kind of responsibility anywhere else. It’s a great thing for a college application to say that you’ve done something like this and it looks good on job applications down the road as well.”

Hawkins included her work as a lifeguard on her application to Brigham Young University.

“I haven’t gotten any specific feedback about it, but I have to believe that it helps,” she said.

And there’s a level of job security.

“Once they’re on board with us, and we haven’t had any discipline problems, they can pretty much believe that they have a job with us the next summer as long as they want to come back,” Ranson said. “It’s not guaranteed, but they can be pretty well assured. We hire so many lifeguards that we do want them to come back. That way we don’t have to train so many people in our way of doing things.”

Polello is in the unique position to hire the graduates of his own training process.

“Between us and the downtown YMCA, we train more lifeguards than everyone else in the county combined, but I also hire more lifeguards than anyone else,” he said. “It’s the best of both worlds for me. Instead of a 30-minute job interview with these kids I’m getting a 30- to 32-hour job interview. I get a chance to gauge where they are in the class and how serious they are about the job. That ends up being so beneficial for us because we get a much better picture of who we’re hiring.”

The city of Spokane found itself short by 20 lifeguards when its five pools, Witter, A.M. Cannon, Comstock, Liberty and Hillyard, opened June 19. Those spots were filled at the last minute, but the city will run a training session later this summer for lifeguards interested in working next summer.

“We will even pay them back for more than 50 percent of the cost of the class if they stay and work for us for the full season,” Ranson said. “It costs $125 for the class and if they work the whole summer for us, we’ll pay them back $75 at the end of the season.”