At our bike shop in Jericho we have been busy trying to find some new staff. In the past the process of finding new staff has been a relatively painless process. Luckily the bike industry is an incestuous community and people easily move around in the happy little family that is cycle retail.

However our latest vacancies have caught the eye of a growing number of enthusiasts looking to join the cycle industry with little or no bike shop experience.

Surprising numbers of applicants from other trades and sectors applied, all stating their new-found passion for cycling and desire to now surround themselves with bikes all day and it was really quite humbling realising lots of people think working in a bike shop is a great way to make a living.

Well it is and it isn’t. Let’s be honest, there are downsides to all trades. But the biggest obstacle is having to accept you are working in a skilled arena for often low wages.

We may not have university degrees in bicycles but the knowledge a good bike shop worker or mechanic must possess is staggering.

For example, most of the bikes that come through the door may look different to the passing eye but are relatively similar in terms of the components on them so, easy solution – keep a stock of standard replacement parts and mend bikes quickly.

Simple, you may think. However, unbeknown to the next customer that comes in, he is riding the rarest vintage bike with hard-to-get parts and we have to know how to get them.

But it’s not just vintage bikes that can pose a challenge. The bike industry thrives on changing component standards. I even met a man at a recent bike show that had actually reinvented the wheel – cue some very good jokes at his expense.

Spotting slight variants or idiosyncrasies of old and new bikes is what we bike shop dwellers live for and only experience can help you. Sometimes it takes combined years of knowledge to spot the problem. But all that knowledge creates wisdom and that’s what we like to apply to our customers and help them ride the best bike they can.

We bike shop workers are lucky to have a job people actually want to talk about at dinner parties and it’s true even when we finish work we can be found discussing the merits of this new bike bit or that new frame over a beer. I can see the growing attraction of working in a bike shop but to make it in the trade you have to love the bicycle more than anything, especially money.

As Oxford author Iris Murdoch once wrote “The bicycle is the most civilised conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.” So it is easy to see why you would want to surround yourself with these wonderful machines every day.