How Working At A Startup Will Enrich Your Career

Whether you just graduated and are on the search for your first job, or a student looking up opportunities to gain relevant experience for later, you might want to keep startup offers on your radar. Sure, when choosing between working for a big, established company and a small team that just came up with a new idea that it wants to get on the market, going for the first one seems to be the smart choice. And for some it really is the best choice as not everyone is made for working in a fast changing environment, with paychecks that are often under market value at first, or willing to work late nights.

But for those that are eager to learn, want to make a difference, take responsibility, and want to find joy in what they’re doing, working for a startup might just be the experience of your lifetime. Here at StartUs, we thought about some of the best reasons you should be part of a startup team. Here’s what we came up with:

#1 Taking Responsibility

Working together with a small team that needs to take care of all aspects of a business means you will have a much bigger impact on the company’s success. This also translates into more responsibility for each and every member. On top of that, there is no way your slacking will not be noticed within a short time, making you more motivated to work hard in order not to let your colleagues down.

In comparison to that, going for a corporate will mean very little responsibility when you are just kick-starting your career. So for taking up responsibility even from the beginning of your career, a startup is the way to go.

#2 Expanding Your Skill Set

With most companies you get an exact job description, so the tasks you need to complete are generally limited to that. The startup environment could not be any more different in this regard. Precisely due to the fact that the team is small and the responsibilities are plenty, doing several very different things at a time is common. And with change being an integral part of a startup, your job description is likely to change – sometimes every few days. In fact, you should forget your job description once you are in a startup as you will end up doing a lot more anyways. The great thing about all this is that you will gain skills you never had, upgrading your resume.

#3 Interacting With Entrepreneurs

Startups are founded by visionary people who will passionately work to make their ideas come to life. They are creative people with an entrepreneurial vision from which we can all learn. Even as an intern you can easily interact with the CEO, learn from their experience, and be inspired. This is an opportunity that you can only get in a startup when you are just starting your career. Of course other team members might also have previous experiences you may benefit from, and in such a flat-hierarchy structure as that of a startup, all you have to do is ask!

#4 Gaining Experience – Fast!

Taking on so much responsibility and learning new skills is great way to gain plenty of experience in a short time span. At a startup you also can try your hand at things you have never done before but always found interesting. Maybe you would like to give writing a chance, get insight into how a small company can market itself, give finance a shot? It will be like getting a glimpse at all departments of a company.

If you are, on the other hand, accepting a corporate position, you will work in one department be it marketing, human resources, accounting and so on. As such, a startup proves to be the much more flexible option, one where you can do what you like best. No doubt, this is a great opportunity to enhance your career prospects.

#5 Becoming A Founder Yourself

There is no better way to prepare yourself for launching your own company. Working for a startup will give you the big picture of what a company does, introduce you to some of the struggles, make you more responsible. You can be given the unique chance of witnessing how an idea is transformed into something valueable, acquaint yourself with the whole process of bringing a new product on the market. It will also help you decide whether you have what it takes to be your own boss.

So there you have it! 5 ways in which working at a startup will help your career flourish, setting you on the best track to make a difference. And if you decide a startup is not for you after all, you can choose to leave, knowing you have acquired indispensable insights of running a business.

 

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