What do you do when you’ve found your dream job before you’ve even turned 22? That’s the question AI 2009 graduate Katelyn Reeling asks herself these days. Having moved from tiny Bishop, California to Portland specifically so she could go to school in the nation’s active wear capital, you can imagine the euphoria she felt when she began working as an Associate Apparel Designer at Columbia Sportswear last year.

Yet the path to Katelyn’s dream job wasn’t always clear. She graduated in March, 2009 in as bleak an economic climate as any in the past 50 years. After several online applications yielded no results she decided to take a part-time job at the Columbia retail store in the Portland airport. The idea was to stay busy and do something related to her field. Even though it may have seemed like a step backwards at the time – you don’t exactly need a degree in apparel design to work in retail – it was this decision that ultimately led to Katelyn landing her dream job.

After a few months, things took a turn for the better. Katelyn impressed her supervisors at the retail store. The economy began to improve. Suddenly the Columbia corporate office – which had been on a hiring freeze – was hiring again. As an employee at the retail store, Katelyn’s name was now in the Columbia computer system. This time she applied and her application rose to the top. She was hired as an intern. She showed talent, enthusiasm and as luck would have it, a full-time position opened in her department. Katelyn interviewed and was hired. In nine months she went from a part-time employee to a full-time Associate Apparel Designer.

This isn’t the kind of story that will work for everyone. There is never a guarantee of being promoted from a company’s retail store to their corporate headquarters. However, what Katelyn did is what the savvy ones do: she sized up the situation and, though working in retail wasn’t her dream job, she knew the overall product was something of interest to her. Within a few months she went from selling that product to actually helping design it.

Katelyn’s advice, not surprisingly, is to keep trying new things and always look for purpose in them. When in school, she recognized that every class – even the ones she didn’t like – had a purpose. Down the road, this mindset paid off. Now she just has to figure out what to do next.