These next few weeks of your international hiring practices are key for a number of reasons.

• For at least a decade until the 2014 season we have taken the reins in the UK and controlled embassy J-1 visa appointments.  The US Embassy in Grosvenor Square has changed its processes, and now applicants are required to make their own bookings and sponsors are out of the picture.  Make sure to reinforce the importance of visa booking with all your international staff!
• Applicants are eager to make their summer plans, and the most skilled applicants have other options than Camp America.  Lock in your key international hires now and get them hyped up about camp.  No sales talk here just the facts!  They will start looking at other opportunities with every week that goes by here on out.
• Applicants from the Southern Hemisphere face huge increases in flight costs as the Spring progresses and may find the program prohibitive if they are not placed at least during the month of April.  These are often great candidates for specialist positions.  You might want to think twice about waiting for that sailing guy who made a casual commitment to return to camp.
• We’ll have last-minute staff for sure, as we always do.  These will be the most eager to participate and you can count on them coming, but the selection will be smaller.  Take this into consideration as you weigh your staffing.

Hope this helps a bit with perspective.  Count on us to go to the ends of the earth to make the match, but there are some practical aspects to be aware of.