Employment advice is really Chad’s forte, but when I saw this interview with Rachelle Chenier through the last Malakye newsletter, I got really stoked and thought I’d share why.

Now I’ve never met Rachelle.  She could very well be a horrible human (unlikely since Malakye rarely does pieces on horrible humans, but you never know).  Why do I like her then?  She was willing to pay her dues.

If you read the interview, Rachelle graduated with a degree from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, a great school to go to if you’re looking for a job, say in apparel design or something similar.  What was her first real job in action sports?  Receptionist @ Analog.

Receptionist?  What?  Surely Rachelle didn’t major in receptionist-ing @ FIDM, so why would she take such a job?  Well, probably because Analog wanted her to pay her dues.

From experience, it seems unlikely that anyone is going to hire you right out of college for your dream job.  Many of the people in this industry started at the bottom.  Check LinkedIn and see how many people answered phones @ Transworld.  Myself, my first career job did involve pitching stories about snowboard gear and personalities, in addition to getting non-fat latte’s for people before brainstorms, faxing media alerts about high school science fair winners and making sure Fed-Ex packages shipped out on time.

As Rachelle alluded to, working at a lower level let her really find out how the the company worked on the inside.  She probably would have preferred not having to clean out the espresso machine, but it seems to have worked out for her.  I’ve heard it said numerous times that you need to show you can do the basic jobs first (no offense to espresso techs) before moving forward.  While we’re always looking for talent @ BBPR, when it comes to entry level work, it’s less than enthralling.  Our previous interns have been charged with everything from researching blogger contact info to finding boxes large enough so we can ship an editor a board with bindings mounted (don’t want that jib deck appearing in editorial with an alpine stance, now do we?).

Kill it at the basic stuff and you can show employers that you’re both hungry and willing to take on the jobs that are less than sexy.  Those jobs are an integral part of making things happen.  On them and hopefully you’ll be recognized when the next spot up opens.  And if not… well, there’s this site called Malakye.

Tags: action sports employment