Should we get a Entry-level job at a Start-up?

You are reading the first article in my series about Job, where I will put forward my personal review about different positions in an organization as well as different fields in the Economic sector. I believe that mentioning Start-up is a great way to start. Hope you will find this article as well as this series helpful, or at least enjoyable. Since you are reading the viewpoint of an unemployed and undergraduate girl, and I'm not even a recruiter, so don't take anything here so serious and just enjoy it as you are receiving a piece of advice from your bestie.

To talk a bit about myself, I'm a third-year student at Foreign Trade University, majoring in International Finance. The journey to figure out my dream job has been much more to say than the mạ. I spent almost one-year exploring Marketing, a fancy and colorful part of Economics until I switched to Technology, which my major has nearly nothing relating to, because of my novelty-seeking trait and the rise of Start-ups trend. When it got closer to my graduation, I got insecure about my long-term career and my competitiveness in the labor market so I considered turning back to my major at the university. It can be seen that I am quite struggling to find out my own direction for my career path. However, roaming around the job market has considerably improved my understanding of the business environment.

The scope of this article

In a great number of Start-ups I have learned about, I have just experienced the recruitment process, including interview round, of up to 8 Start-ups and officially worked for 3 out of them. And all of those start-ups are not at the Unicorn level. Only Vexere, where I took the Internship for 4 months is pretty well-known nationwide. Some of the Start-ups are also profitable and well-operated, but only gain their reputation in their business sector. Others are at the very beginning stage, or even bankrupted already. This means my Start-ups picture and this article will miss the traits of some Unicorn like Tiki, Lazada, Shopee,...But I am pretty sure you will find them somewhere on Google. Besides, in this article, I address the term Entry-level as the first or second job, including intern positions. I, personally, took those internships mentioned above as part-time positions since I still had to attend classes.

My article will include three sessions: The pros (1) and cons (2) of working for Start-up as a trainee/fresher and my advice on taking a job at a Start-up (3). So I won't take your time any longer. Let's jump right into the promising land: Start-up Environment.

1. The pros of working for Start-up as a trainee/fresher

Young colleagues

Most of your colleagues there will be quite young and open-minded. You won't find it hard to accommodate yourself in such a brand new environment, and easily make acquaintance with your team soon. Don't overlook the importance of colleagues. In some cases, they may be the last motivation kicking you out of your bed to go to work every morning. Moreover, imagine how tough it is to be lonely in your company, only focusing on your tasks and totally out of the group's insight joke. Believe me, it makes you even more stressful than receiving a reproof.

Opportunities for Growth

From my personal perspective, a job, at this stage of life, should serve the growth purpose rather than earning money. Of course, no one can turn a blind eye on salary when looking for a job but the value you add up to yourself day by day through the job also turns into money in the long run. In addition, it's hard to fully identify ourselves at our age, so a job with fix work every day may limit our chances to better understand our competency. With the flexible organizational structure of Start-ups, you can face many cross-function tasks that facilitate your wider view of the business. Parallelly, you get chances to expose to the whole picture of a business and explore more about yourself with diverse tasks you have to handle. As one of the Start-up' characteristics is keeping pace with market changes, there is always something new for you to learn in a Start-up, that's why you can daily develop yourself there.

Filling your need of Contribution

While MNCs/ big corps are believed to be good for our future in many aspects, such as having a better CV, working in an international environment, etc; they, definitely, have their drawbacks. If you are not confident about winning the Management Trainee recruitment program held by those MNCs, you have to put up with the fact that you are just a tiny part of the firm and your working outcome rarely affects its general performance. Personally, I desire to exert impacts on the business I work for and boost self-esteem along the way. Since Start-up teams are often small, you can always put forward your ideas. Also, you may find your own trace in the appearance of the business or delivered products/services of the company.

2. The cons of working for Start-up as a trainee/fresher

Confusing workflow

It happens to Start-ups at the early stage or in the reconstruction process. The latter scenario is not that uncommon since Start-ups have to measure efficiency and change their business strategy as well as frameworks fairly frequently along their development process. Also, the confusing workflow, in my opinion, is the common downside of a flexible organizational structure. Some typical manifestations of the confusing workflow are vague tasks with the lack of information about who you should submit, get the revision or who you gonna work with; and the situation of overlap scope of work among teams. They may cause a wide range of obstacles at work, especially to those who are not active communicators but task-oriented. At the end of the day, workers who have to suffer the issue may feel nothing but dissatisfaction with the poor outcome together with the angry that it was not their fault.

Unclear business strategy

It will be awful if you work for a business but you can't see eye to eye with its vision, or you don't place confidence in its profitability because of poor business strategy. Such situations happen with Start-ups at the pre-seed and seed stages. Sometimes even employees at mature Start-ups suffer the problem when their company changes the CEO or business strategy. My only advice for this case is just quitting the job unless they pay you a really high salary.

3. My advice with on taking a job at a Start-up

For the question I put in the title, my answer is definitely a yes. After having weighed up the pros and cons and considered my own competencies, I drew a conclusion that Star-up is ideal for kicking off my career path. However, from past experiences, I have to keep reminding myself of several things, which I will share with you guys below as my personal advice for you when choosing an Entry-level job at a Start-up.

- Choosing a Start-up with

Profitable business model/strategy/market,.etc (From your own perspectives)
Professional framework: It may be hard to learn about this information but very valuable with you in making your decision. It is not always true that a big Start-up owns a professional working style and a small Start-up owns a poor one.

- Caring about how you can grow yourself rather than the title, Start-up's brand or any other benefits

Don't just look at the title or the Start-up name because it may have nothing relating to what you gonna do and who you gonna work with. Try to ask as much as possible about the details of your responsibilities in the interview.

- Being active

As I mentioned before, being an active communicator may remedy the impact of the confusing workflow problem, which is common in the Start-up environment. Besides, Start-ups may offer you opportunities to do some tasks out of your responsibility, so the more you are active, the better you can grow and find out about yourself.

- Committing to what you do: 

I faced different difficulties when I worked at Start-ups. To be honest, there was almost nothing that holds me back every time I wanted to quit: the benefit was not attractive, the title and the company were not that good for my CV, daily tasks were bullshit and sometimes I was left with a mess from assignees ...It may be true at that time that I should quit as I made the wrong decision to take the position, but It maybe not. Maybe It was my fault not to be active enough or didn't work hard enough. Sometimes I easily forgot the purpose of starting to work there and what I really wanted from the job when I ran into difficulties. After all these times, I just wanna give you guys very old-school and theoretical advice that working at a Start-up maybe not as fancy as you thought, every time you wanna give up, just remember why you start the journey. Because I mention starting the job at Entry-level in the title, I hope that we all set the growing purpose as the top priority.

Hope you guys enjoy this first article in my Job series. Let's chill a bit with this song (Link here) and stay tuned to the next episode. Peace out =)