Working for a Startup Could be the Best Opportunity of Your Career

If a startup allows you to join their team, that fact already says a lot about you. Startups hire and fire quickly. You have made them think about you, and they have considered your application. That you are in says a lot about you and your new company. You are good enough and they can see your worth. This might be the opportunity you were waiting for.

There is no guarantee that your new company will succeed. According to CB Insights, if your new employer has survived the past twenty months, there is a 70% chance of further success. That success can mean tremendous opportunity and growth for your career.

Should you stick around and what can you expect if you do remain committed to the new startup?

Early Indications of Success

Joining a startup can be very lucrative. It is a chance you are taking. You may ask what indications are there that this startup will make it? According to CBS News, these are the indications that your employer will be successful:

Their Leaders Have Experience

A company that is established by people who have experience running similar endeavours has a better chance at success than the contrary. If they seem to be trying to get to know the business from scratch, see that as a problem.

They Offer a Standard Salary

In a new startup, stay away from commissions or stock options as payment. The new business should be paying you a reasonable salary. A business that pays you an amount that seems too good to be true is also a red flag. They are paying that to the other employees and may bankrupt themselves just with their payroll.

Their Employees and Other Companies Talk About Them

Good startups draw positive attention. Their employees and other companies will talk about them. Be careful of startups that nobody talks about or that draw negative attention. Few things say “brilliant prospects” than employees and others praising the company.

What is Being Sold is in Demand

No startup can sell a product or service that is not in demand. If the market needs or wants it chances of success are higher.

How Will the new Startup Benefit You?

Your prospective new startup will benefit you immensely once you have established that it meets the criteria for success. Now is the time to be of value to your new career and to allow it to be of value to you. There are many reasons put forward on how startups can benefit you, but I feel the following are the most meaningful for a serious professional:

Quick Promotions are Within Reach

Working for a startup means your employers will notice outstanding work. Other than in large companies, startups are small enough for you to stand out. The owners are looking to expand, as is the way any successful business is run, and will happily promote someone who understands and works towards the success of the budding new enterprise.

The owners will promote people who stand out. You could find yourself the head of a division within a year or two, having grasped this opportunity. There are, in fact, few greater opportunities for fast-tracking than working for the right startup. In larger companies you will simply not stand out.

The fact that you are promoted so early means that you are in all probability, indispensable to the new startup. Indispensability is not absolute, but it garnishes greater job security. Job security, in turn, is why you want a promotion, other than for the income.

Your Work is Impactful

Having achieved the initial success of being part of an exciting new enterprise, you now affect it directly. Because you affect it, you have a real impact. That impact translates to you making a difference, and professionals who make differences create reputations.

You have not only established yourself as an authority, but have opened numerous additional doors for your professional career. Even if you were to be fired tomorrow or if the startup were to fail, you would be considered more favourably for similar positions. Any hiring authority would place your Curriculum Vitae at the top of the pile.

Since you made a real difference to your previous employer they who are hiring would be amiss for not hiring someone like you. The CV under yours would be of the individual who has experience but had no visible impact.

Job Satisfaction is High

Have you ever wondered what makes a workaholic? I am sure that you would agree that the satisfaction gained by doing one’s work well plays an empirical role. Being a workaholic, of course, is not healthy as you lose work-life balance. I simply imply that job satisfaction plays a salient role in our lives.

Being able to affect the business we work in makes us feel appreciated and worthy. In a startup, you are more of a pillar of success than in a large company. Your team relies heavily on you. Your input relieves or creates a bottleneck in the business at hand. When you meet this challenge head-on and succeed, your feeling of achievement is unmatched.
Startups have small teams to begin with. The channels through which work flows are thus limited and team members not coping are immediately visible. Conversely, team members who speed things along stand out for all the right reasons. They create their own job satisfaction and feed off of that feeling of achievement.

Conclusion

There are few opportunities in life that present more of a positive career opportunity than aligning oneself with the right startup. Once you have done an initial assessment to determine the feasibility of said startup succeeding, the advantages are significant.

As we have discussed, the right startup will allow you the chance to position yourself higher up and do so in a shorter space of time than a large company. To add to that, the right startup ensures you have an impact, and it allows you a better chance at job satisfaction. There are those who will argue that job satisfaction may actually be the most important factor in any professional career.

Whatever the case may be, startups are exciting. Being part of such an endeavour fills most of us with a new sense of purpose, excitement, and energy. It is what we yearn for when we imagine a career shift.