My name is Betsy Melin. I graduated from Loyola University Chicago in May of 2018 with a degree in journalism, already knowing that I wanted something different for a career. I initially didn’t know where to start. I had just spent the last four years working on a degree that I no longer wanted to use.
I was searching high and low for jobs and kept running into a wall, I needed prior job experience to get anywhere. Even many positions that advertised as entry-level required 2-3 years experience. From that initial search, I learned I was going to need a place that offered comprehensive training in a short amount of time. I wanted to learn as much as I could as quickly as possible in order to make up for lost time. Many of the positions I was looking at were internship positions, but most of them were unpaid. As a new graduate, I wasn’t in a position to work for free. I needed a position where I could provide for myself and start earning right away. Coast offered me the ability to learn on the job through training with no prior experience and the opportunity to earn based on my work right away.
When I first found Coast I was nervous. I had never done sales before and I didn’t know if I was going to be any good at it. I knew that the opportunity was too good to pass up even if it seemed scary. So I took a leap and accepted the internship position and got to work. In the first week of working at Coast, I learned more than I had at Journalism internships where I worked for months. It felt like a crash course in everything to do with sales and marketing. I walked in intimidated but by the end of the first week, the training had made me so confident I felt like I could take on the whole world. In this internship not only have I learned a huge amount about sales and marketing but I also gained an entire set of new professional skills. I learned about interviewing, financial management, resume building and the expectations of working in a professional office. Not only that but I also had the opportunity to meet so many new exciting people. Every day I went into the office it felt like I was getting a chance to hang out with my friends. I am so grateful for the skills I’ve gained, the things I’ve learned and the friends I have made while working at Coast Incorporated.