It’s about lifestyle

A mass exodus from skate parks and surf shops across California is now under way. Young adventure seekers began heading up to the Lake Tahoe area early this month to start jobs as lift operators, ski instructors and food servers in Sierra Nevada ski resorts. The young adults take the low-paying jobs and put up with skyrocketing rent, with two goals in mind: a free season pass and having fun.

Resorts began to receive phone calls and e-mails as early as August from anxious young people looking for a fun way to spend their winters and earn some extra cash. As the calls flooded the lines, personnel departments became submerged in resumes from prospective employees as far away as China and Brazil. DeDe Carillo, head of personnel at Squaw Valley USA, said most of the employees hired for the winter season are those who have called or are rehirees who worked for the resort the year before.

Carillo hires an estimated 600 employees for the winter season via rehires and international employment services alone. For the remaining 200 to 250 employees Squaw needs for a season, the resort holds an annual job fair.

During the first weekend of November, young workers, college students and recent graduates, wearing the latest in athletic fashion, drove their cars into the Sierra Nevada to present their resumes at the job fair and hold casual interviews with department managers from the resort.

SUVs and Volkswagen Jettas with lonely ski racks on top filled the parking lot at Squaw Valley—space that had been mostly empty for months. There was no snow on the ground yet, but the young adults wearing skate shoes and hooded sweatshirts looked as though they were prepared for a snowstorm as they filled the Olympic House in Squaw Valley’s base village.

Many were looking for jobs as ski instructors, although most would be turned away for lack of experience. If turned away, they’d attend another interview for a position in caring for children or flipping burgers—anything for a job at the resort. Like a game of musical chairs, interviewees moved from manager to manager, looking for the perfect fit. Robyn Wini, a supervisor of Squaw Kids, had conducted about 17 interviews by the end of the job fair, many of them with college students.

Samantha Stephens, a recent graduate from the University of California at Berkeley, had driven up for the day and was hoping to get a job as a ski instructor. Though she only had babysitting experience, Stephens hoped her time on the university’s ski team would help sway Wini’s decision to hire her. The two sat down in the Mexican-themed grill on the top floor of the Olympic House to discuss what Stephens would do if hired.

Wini stressed the importance of safety and patience when dealing with children. “We can’t teach people to be nice,” Wini said. “We can teach them how to ski and work with kids.”

After a long talk about issues of safety, in which Wini tested Stephens with a scenario about a group of children who were getting fussy and causing trouble, Wini hired Stephens on the spot. “Usually, I like them to have more experience,” Wini said. “At least she had dealt with kids.”

The resort’s interview process seemed to reflect the lifestyle of the people applying for the jobs. Things were always casual. Sure, there were normal corporate procedures, but the event had the feel of a commune of the 1960s—a vibe that persists at most resorts throughout the region.

Sacramentan Soroush Rahimian, who will begin working at Sierra-at-Tahoe on December 20 as a children’s ski instructor, said he was not quite sure where he was going to stay or how he would get there. He was hoping hitchhiking and crashing at co-workers’ rental homes would solve his problems.

“It always comes back to you,” said Rahimian, who hopes his generosity from last year will come back to him in good couch-surfing karma this year. Last year, he let co-workers live with him when they had nowhere else to go.

Rahimian, a full-time student at California State University at Sacramento, is working toward a bachelor’s degree in engineering and said he hopes to design skis in the near future. For now, he said, he’s looking at his winter job as the ultimate learning experience. “It’s not great pay, but one of my main experiences was skiing,” said Rahimian, who’s looking forward to the free lift ticket that comes with the job.

Michael Kane, another supervisor of Squaw Kids, works as a carpenter in the off-season and became a ski instructor on the East Coast while in college. He moved to the Tahoe region two years ago from Rochester, N.Y. Now, Kane, who looks like a young Gene Wilder, spends his winters working with children and teaching them the joys of skiing, which he loves. “I always worked with kids in a recreational setting,” Kane said. “We try not to look at it as babysitting at all.”

It’s not just locals who look for jobs in the mountains. Patty Stitson of San Diego began working at Squaw after a hitchhiking excursion last year. One of her rides just happened to be working at the resort and told her there were job openings.

She ended up working at the resort that winter and came back this year to the job fair to see if she could land a position that would give her a free ticket to the mountain. Stitson was even leaving her high-paying job as a technology consultant to work at Squaw.

It’s all about the lifestyle for many people, but the move to the mountain is still a big step; employees work part time, make no more than $10 an hour as instructors or food servers and face housing-rental prices that are comparable to the Bay Area’s. But Rahimian and Stitson said the jobs were worth any sacrifice.

That’s the mindset that prevents Carillo, head of personnel at Squaw, from worrying when she becomes short-staffed: There are always young people looking for a winter adventure.