Now Hiring: CHEER DAD

The Unofficial Job Description Nobody Warned You About

Company: Cheerleading, Inc.
Position: Cheer Dad
Department: Logistics, Finance & Emotional Support
Location: TBD, Varies by weekend
Employment Type: Full-time, weekends, holidays, and most of your available PTO
Salary: $0 (expenses not reimbursed)
Reports To: A teenager with a very detailed schedule

About the Position

Cheerleading, Inc. is seeking a highly motivated, financially flexible individual to fill the position of Cheer Dad.

The ideal candidate will possess exceptional time-management skills, a reliable vehicle, above-average upper-body strength, and the ability to remain calm while someone explains that the bow you just purchased is the wrong shade of blue.

Previous cheerleading experience is not required. In fact, it may be preferable.

Candidates should understand that while this position is technically voluntary, resignations are not currently being accepted.

Primary Responsibilities

1. Transportation & Logistics

Provide reliable transportation to practices, private lessons, competitions, team dinners, and events that were apparently mentioned three weeks ago.

Must be comfortable operating a vehicle before sunrise while receiving conflicting navigation instructions from multiple passengers.

Ability to locate a convention center parking space within a 1.5-mile radius is considered a core competency.

2. Financial Management

Oversee a rapidly expanding annual budget with limited visibility into future expenditures.

Expenses may include, but are not limited to:

• Tuition, uniforms, shoes, and competition fees.
• Travel, hotels, parking, and concession-stand chicken tenders.
• Additional uniforms, additional shoes, and additional competition fees.
• A $90 bow that looks suspiciously similar to last season’s $85 bow.

Applicants with backgrounds in accounting or financial planning are encouraged to leave those skills at home.

3. Equipment Management

Maintain custody of backpacks, water bottles, warmup jackets, phones, chargers, snacks, and assorted items handed to you without explanation.

Must be capable of holding a minimum of seven personal belongings while standing in a crowded convention center without access to a chair.

Successful candidates will develop the ability to distinguish between items that are genuinely lost and items that are simply located directly in front of their daughter.

4. Performance Analysis

Demonstrate a working knowledge of deductions, difficulty, execution, synchronization, and the difference between a “hit zero” and a performance that merely looked pretty good.

Must understand that asking, “Didn’t they do the same thing as the other team?” is not a productive contribution to the conversation.

Advanced candidates may eventually learn to recognize a full-up, a double-down, and the precise moment when everyone in the arena collectively stops breathing.

5. Emotional Support

Provide encouragement following difficult practices, missed skills, disappointing scores, and competitions where the judges apparently watched a different routine.

Must be able to distinguish between situations requiring advice, situations requiring silence, and situations requiring immediate access to Chick-fil-A.

Experience responding to “I’m fine” when the individual is clearly not fine is strongly preferred.

Required Qualifications

The successful applicant must demonstrate:

• Ability to function on four to five hours of sleep and a medium coffee.
• Willingness to drive six hours to watch a two-minute-and-thirty-second performance.
• Excellent backpack-carrying skills.
• Proficiency in finding hotel rooms with free breakfast.
• Ability to identify his daughter from approximately 200 feet away while she is wearing the exact same uniform as 19 other athletes.
• Working knowledge of competition schedules that change without warning.
• Capacity to applaud enthusiastically despite having no idea what the final score means.

Preferred Qualifications: A strong bladder, comfortable shoes, and the patience of a kindergarten teacher during a full moon.

Work Environment

Employees should expect extended periods of standing, occasional periods of sitting on extremely uncomfortable bleachers, and frequent exposure to loud music, hairspray, rhinestones, and unexplained schedule delays.

Travel is estimated at 40–60% of available weekends.

The position occasionally requires attendance at outdoor events, though the majority of assignments take place in windowless convention centers with temperatures ranging from “meat locker” to “surface of the sun.”

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary: $0 annually.

Performance bonus: None.

Overtime: Mandatory. Unpaid.

Retirement plan: Your daughter/son eventually graduates.

Paid time off: Subject to the competition calendar. Potentially the two days between seasons.

Employee discounts: Occasionally, a hotel offers free parking, breakfast, and a fitness center.

Additional benefits include:

• Complimentary access to hundreds of songs you will never voluntarily listen to again.
• An extensive collection of event wristbands.
• The opportunity to become close friends with people you originally met in a parking garage.
• Occasional recognition in the form of “Thanks, Dad.”

Performance Evaluations

Employee performance will be reviewed regularly by a teenage supervisor.

Ratings may fluctuate significantly based on punctuality, snack selection, and whether you remembered to bring the correct water bottle.

A single forgotten item may result in an immediate downgrade from “Best Dad Ever” to “Seriously, Dad?”

There is no formal appeals process.

Opportunities for Advancement

High-performing employees may be promoted to Senior Cheer Dad, Team Tent Coordinator, Volunteer Equipment Transport Specialist, or Assistant to the Assistant Booster Club Treasurer.

These promotions do not include additional compensation.

They do, however, include significantly more responsibility.

Why Apply?

At first glance, this position offers very little.

The hours are terrible. The expenses are outrageous. The travel is exhausting. The supervisor can be demanding.

And after years of service, the whole operation eventually shuts down.

But somewhere between the early morning drives, the long practices, the crowded arenas, and the endless weekends, something happens.

You become part of her story.

You see the confidence she builds, the friendships she makes, the setbacks she overcomes, and the person she’s becoming.

And every once in a while, just before she steps onto the mat, she looks up into the stands.

Not because she needs you to do anything.

Just to make sure you’re there.

And you are.

Compensation: Still $0.

Worth: Every penny.

 

— Cody
Cheer Dad & Founder, Cheer Dads