To the editor:

Last week, my college-age son took the call that every teen dreams of: “You’re hired.”

The summer job is in downtown Seattle at a summer tour company. It pays well. And more important, the weekly schedule exceeds 35 hours per week.

And, if he does well, there is future holiday and summer work.

The backstory is interesting as well.

In the interview, the hiring manager asked about any experience he had regarding customer service. My son immediately pointed to his experience working at Moonraker Bookstore six years earlier, which occupied a prominent place on his résumé (via the eighth-grade apprenticeship program at Langley Middle School). He elaborated about his experiences running the cash register, interacting with customers, stocking shelves, unpacking boxes of books, and so on.

After the interview, he thought he had a good chance at the job because of the hiring manager’s follow-up questions and comments around this experience at Moonraker. What he didn’t know is that there were literally hundreds of other applications for that customer-service job. During his first couple of days, his new boss commented that he had a lot of competition. It turns out that there were 500 other applications.

He is sure he would not have had a chance for this lucrative summer job without the résumé-building experience that he had at Moonraker. Thank you, Josh, for allowing Forrest to work at Moonraker. Thank you.

And thank you, Diana Shirley, for running the apprenticeship program at Langley Middle School. Your program made a profoundly positive impact on our family this summer — a full six years after Forrest enrolled in the LMS Apprenticeship Program.

Craig Cyr

Langley