Our son attended Camp Invention this week. This is a nationally-organized program that is implemented on a local basis. Really, it's a "day camp" rather than an actual "camp" but it is designed for elementary students to explore, invent, and learn. They didn't have stuff like this when I was a kid. (Of course, there were those couple of summers that I was able to work with Thomas Edison in his Menlo Park laboratory ... that was cool.)

Anyway, they got to do lots of neat stuff at Camp Invention -- design a roller coaster and an amusement park ride, think about safety, take things apart, try to create their own invention -- all sorts of great opportunities to learn, practice certain skills, and have fun!

As someone who recruits, interviews, hires, trains and develops others, I saw very clearly some principles that Camp Invention tries to instill in kids which will carry them far in life. These are all things that I look for when I interview people for jobs.

1) Communication. Camp Invention encourages the students to work together to solve problems and create things. I recently interviewed someone, for a training job of all things, who never listened. He just rambled on and on and on but never stopped to listen. As you can well imagine, I will not be hiring him anytime soon for a position of training others because training involves a lot of listening to your students. Having good communication skills does not mean that you have to be a world-famous orator. It simply means that you have to be able to accurately share information back and forth with others. A prerequisite to that is that you have to be able to determine the times when information sharing is necessary.

2) Follow-through. This is critical in today's world. Many of us in our jobs have almost total control over our own productivity. Team members who keep themselves productive and focused on accomplishments are very valuable to any organization. At Camp Invention, the kids were given specific tasks and, with only minimal guidance, they had to figure out how to accomplish those tasks. The ability to finish things you start is not something everyone has but it is a quality that well-serves those who do have it.

3) Ingenuity. Today, this is often called "thinking outside the box" or being "visionary." Whatever you want to call it, my most valuable team members always have this rare quality in their repertoire. Many people don't like to color outswide the lines. They can't press their minds outside of certain boundaries. Unfortunately, growth, development and improvement do not occur unless you can break through paradigms and parameters. At Camp Invention, the kids were encouraged to think about things in new ways and without boundaries.

This is exciting stuff. I am not sure exactly how well our son took to everything but you have to start somewhere. Kids who develop these skills and carry them into adulthood will never, ever have problems finding employers who value and want them on board their teams.