Gen Z might groan at the idea of fetching their boss’s flat white. And who can blame them? They’ve entered the workforce in an era where optics matter, and they know that being the person who always grabs the coffee, takes notes, or organizes the lunch (also known as “office housework”) can make you look more junior and hurt progression over time.
But Stephanie Kramer, the CHRO of L’Oréal U.S., says those small tasks are often where opportunity begins—and they played a surprisingly big role in her own career to the corner office at the world’s largest beauty company.
Quest fragrances, where she worked closely with perfumers early in her career
Before joining the Fortune 500 firm, L’Oreal, Kramer’s first job out of university was at Quest fragrances. It was also the first time the value of a simple coffee run stood out.
“I really wanted to have time to get to meet this incredibly cool perfumer,” she recalls to Fortune, adding that she went early to the meeting with the mindset that she simply wanted to support her team. But she soon discovered that “something positive comes out of those little things too.”
Instead of being wrapped up in being seen as the most junior person in the room, she quickly noted it gets you access.
“If you’re the one that is going to capture the actions from the meeting and the next steps, and you’re listening and you’re observing that isn’t that isn’t necessarily a negative,” Kramer explains. “You are in the room and you are absorbing how those points are coming to be. You’re developing the skills of inference.”
“So just make sure, when you’re discrediting some of those more small tasks, that you’re not discrediting their value they bring to you and your learning. I think about that all the time.”
Take whatever you can now, be strategic later
Kramer’s résumé spans Chanel, Kiehl’s, and L’Oréal’s corner offices—but it’s the middle-school roles and the odd, early-career errands she remembers most clearly.
“Those ones stick with you,” she says. That first job probably won’t be your dream role, it certainly wasn’t hers. But over time, it will have a snowball effect on your career.
“I don’t know if those are the ones where I ever wanted to be, you know, in my whole life.” Yet, she insists, every experience adds up. “It does. It makes a big difference.”
Her message to young workers facing a freezing job market: take the role, take the task, take the coffee run—because the value will only compound over time.
“You just have to start,” Kramer insists. “I guarantee that someday, that’s what you’re going to talk about in your interview.”
“It might not be the job that you have, or that you’re not necessarily sure that you should take. Right now, maybe it’s a paycheck, or maybe it’s a platform for you to connect with other people so that you can discover what you want to do.”
“When people ask me how I ended up in HR, I tell them it’s from middle school, because in middle school I was a lifeguard, I was a Girl Scout, I was a cross country runner, which means that you have to run through the woods alone, but you’re still making points as a team….Those jobs are part of what my job is today.”
The promotions will come later—but first, focus on
As the adage goes: If you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves. The same goes for your career. Kramer is far from the first exec to tell young workers that if they excel in the small tasks today, the promotions will follow.
Cisco’s U.K. chief spent 25 years climbing the ranks at the Fortune 500 Europe telecommunications giant BT, before joining Cisco in 2022 as managing director and being promoted lead its U.K. and Ireland arm just two years later.
She previously told Fortune that both Gen Z new hires and millennial middle managers need to be more “patient” in their quest for success. The promotions will come, but young aspirational workers should focus on building their skills over rushing to nab any new snazzy title to update their LinkedIn.
Pret A Manger’s CEO Pano Christou, went from working at McDonald’s for $3 an hour to earning millions as the boss of the British sandwich chain. He says he got promotion after promotion by doing his very best in the role he was in—even those junior ones.
“I’ve watched people that have been so fixated on the next role that they really take their eye off the current job they’re doing,” Christou told Fortune. “My philosophy has always been if you do a great job, people will notice you.”
Likewise, Shaid Shah, one of the most senior execs at Mars—the powerhouse behind household brands like Dolmio—said the best career hack is to stop obsessing over getting that promotion or dream job title, and embrace the many steps in between that get you there.
“It’s about acquiring the experiences that you need to realize your ambition, to realize what makes you happy, what makes you tick, what inspires you to get out of bed every day,” Shah explained. “Because career success is more than just hierarchy.”
