Maybe that startup experience won't look so bad on your resume after all

In our work, we meet a lot of CEOs who look for advice on who they should hire for their businesses. Among the many attributes that they are looking for, the most difficult to fill are the ones that involve business transition or business building.

I think it’s an interesting challenge. In the past, recruiting efforts often focused narrowly on finding people from traditional competitors and luring them away with more attractive packages and career prospects.

It was always about hunting for candidates with the “right” pedigree or who offered the perception of quality.  Recruiters would typically narrow their search to candidates at the leading companies in the industry, candidates who had spent the bulk of their career at a single company and therefore demonstrated loyalty and consistency, and candidates who often possessed the “right” educational background.

This traditional approach is now increasingly outdated. I’m finding a lot of CEOs who are saying that’s not what we’re looking for. Today, they want to look for people who have a much wider variety of experiences. More often than not, they’re interested in digital or more “agile” profiles – people who are currently working at a startup, those with on-the-ground, roll-up-your-sleeves business building experience.

This is very different from the past. People with different career paths used to be seen as fragmented, as having pursued a random career path. Their resumes showed they “jumped around”, they were not loyal to any single employer. 

But the world is changing, including here in China. The advantage is no longer with the loyalists who have stuck around for a long time. While loyalty still counts for something, that is no longer the dominant trait companies are looking for. Instead, they’re increasingly searching for people who may have had a bit more roundabout career path, who may be more curious about different things, who took some bets to try more things. Once seen as risky moves, now they are actually considered as something of a benefit, signaling perhaps a more adventurous and more innovative individual.

Of course, this is not a black and white issue. Many companies offer rotations across business units and between roles. At consulting firms like mine, we get to serve on different projects, in different industries, and across different service lines. The key is really around professional renewal, entrepreneurship, and personal growth.

A few years ago, we did a survey of thousands of executives around the world and asked them, “What experience meant the most to you? When did you learn the most? What was it like?” Ranked the highest were job rotations, fighting a crisis, and taking an international posting. Ranked the lowest was traditional classroom-style corporate training.

As people think about what’s next for their career path, it’s important to be aware of how the market has changed. The days when parents try to coach you into how to land a steady job is giving way to a much more fluid and flexible approach to building career paths.

The implications are significant. For employers, they’ll need to spend more time and energy on ensuring their employees have opportunities for professional renewal and growth—or risk seeing them walk out the door.

They will need to create more job rotations, develop entrepreneurial opportunities within traditional careers, or even create more unconventional jobs. More creative ways such as sabbaticals, or even taking time off to pursue non-traditional opportunities at non-profits, could also be ways to rejuvenate plateauing careers.

For adventurous employees, this perhaps is very good news. What was once viewed as a risky career move may not be as risky as you think. Joining a startup could be a very interesting career move, for instance. Even if doesn’t work out, it could offer the chance to gain valuable experience that will provide useful for your next career step.

But before you hand in that resignation letter, just remember, as always, there are two sides to this phenomenon. Since employee loyalty is coming down across the board, those who stick around would sometimes command a “premium” as many of their peers depart to try out new opportunities.

Nevertheless, the good news is that companies are getting a lot more accommodating and accepting of less traditional career paths. And they are reducing their reliance on traditional markers during their resume screening process.  

And, we will all have the chance to embrace more varied career paths, whether we are fresh graduates just starting out, experienced workers undergoing a mid-tenure career change, or seasoned professionals approaching the end of a career.

Career transitions are no longer as daunting as they used to be.

What do you think? I’d love to read your ideas in the comments. 

I’m the Managing Partner of McKinsey’s Greater China Region. Please reach out and connect or follow me on LinkedIn. I welcome you to subscribe to my newsletter, Inside the Chinese boardroom, by clicking the subscribe button.