Why Graduates Should Consider Working for a Startup

It may seem, to many graduates, that their best option after leaving university is to find a role at a large, successful company, where they can learn from the best, gain knowledge, grow their career and maybe show off to their friends and family, a bit… Although this route does have its advantages, it is worth taking a look at why graduates should consider making their first role out of university one with a startup instead of an established corporate company. The idea of working for a startup might induce fears of instability and failure for many graduates, but this could well be wrongheaded as the experience you gain from working at a startup is likely to be vastly more valuable than the experience you would gain at a larger, more established company. For a number of reasons, graduates will genuinely benefit from making their first role one at a startup. From job progression to flexibility, here are some of the reasons why graduates should consider working for a startup.

Quicker Job Progression

When working for a larger company, progressing up the corporate ladder can be a long, slow process. Depending on the size of the organisation, gaps between promotions can be years. If you do well in a larger organisation you are likely to slowly creep up the hierarchy, certainly, however, it is more difficult to get noticed for doing a great job and even if you are noticed the progression can still take years. Often you may have to wait for positions to open up in order to get the promotion you deserve and reaching the higher echelons in the organisation can take decades as a result. Startups tend to be smaller outfits who do not subscribe to such rigid structures, meaning that career progression is a much more attainable goal. Roles are less strictly prescribed in startups meaning that you do not have to wait for a role to become open in order to fill it. If you are doing a great job and helping the company grow you can essentially create roles for yourself. As the company grows more roles will be created at the top end of the organisation, for instance, as more managers are needed. A graduate who performs well in the early days of a startup will be given far more responsibility since the roles are far less specific. Taking advantage of this responsibility and expanding your role leaves you in good stead to fill up spaces as the company grows.

Gain More Experience

In a similar vein, were you to leave university and go and work for a large corporate company, you are likely to spend the first year or two being acclimatised and settled in. Often graduates will be given roles that are essentially responsibility-free, to begin with. This can have its advantages certainly. Graduates are given time to get to know the company, find out what area of work most interests them and learn some of the ins and outs. However, this can often be dull and feel unfulfilling and arguably be ineffective, as the settling in process does not always give graduates genuinely meaningful or transferable experience. Graduates beginning their careers at startups, however, have no option but to gain genuine experience from day one. Almost always, a startup’s biggest worry in the early days is money, or lack thereof, meaning that they are unlikely to make any hires who they don’t think will be of actual value to their growth. This, though, means no time for settling in. Which, for some, may be a disadvantage, but for many, getting thrown in at the deep end can be the key to quickly learning the kinds of skills necessary to succeed in the work world. Joining a startup basically guarantees that you will have a role which immediately has a genuine impact on the company. This may seem unsettling for some people coming straight from university, but it can be a priceless learning experience, which gives you an array of attributes necessary to move onwards and upwards in your career.

More Commitment to the Cause

Unless, as a graduate, you are joining a company for which you feel a genuine passion and excitement towards, starting at the bottom of the ladder for an established organisation can sometimes make you feel isolated and separated from that organisation. It’s difficult to feel connected to a corporate company as a graduate because your lack of responsibility in the role means you can have no real impact on the success, or failures, of that company. This can lead to ambivalence about the success of the organisation you work for. The same cannot be said for a graduate who joins a startup. As mentioned before, when joining you will be expected to genuinely contribute and add value to the company. Being relied on like this from day one will likely leave you feeling more committed and dedicated to the growth of the organisation. Knowing that your input is valued and that your work has an effect on the company and those around you will give you a sense of importance difficult to be found in more traditional work environments. Those around you, in a startup, will have that same level of dedication to making the company work and this will undoubtedly be infectious. Working for a company whose success really means something to you will positively impact your morale and sense of purpose.

Company Culture

Graduates seem to have high expectations for their first workplace these days. With things like the type of office they work in, how flexible their company is, the company culture, the atmosphere of the workplace, work/life balance and the ethics of their employer playing a role in graduates’ decisions, clearly, there are more factors for graduates choosing a career than big wages. Startups may be the choice for those looking for a healthy soul as well as a healthy bank account. More established companies are likely to have been around longer and be slightly more set in their ways than startups when it comes to more modern ways of thinking about work life. Options like remote work and flexible hours may be a non-starter with companies who have succeeded with a 9 to 5 approach for many years. The fact that these types of companies are established and successful makes them less likely to change their ways to accommodate a new way of thinking about things like work-life balance and company culture. And, frankly, who can blame them, if they are successful. However, this may not be the atmosphere graduates feel they best thrive and succeed in. Startups, by their very nature, are new and for this reason are far more likely to meet the expectations of graduates, for a number of reasons. As they are new, startups are more likely to be founded by younger entrepreneurs whose sensibilities will better match those of the graduates thinking about joining them. This can be crucial as many graduates consider the ethical stance of the company they are about to join and startups with younger founders are more likely to agree with the moral or political position of graduates as opposed to older CEOs and founders. Startups, also by their nature, are young and disruptive and looking to make changes to improve the world. This means that they will offer the flexibility and openness that many graduates will be looking for. They will have no allegiance with prescribed ways of work and will be open to options that seem to improve productivity or their team’s morale, be it remote working, flexible hours or experimental ways of working. If you are looking for good work/life balance and flexible work, as many graduates are, then you are more likely to be satisfied working for a startup than anywhere else.

Variety

Beginning your career at a large organisation will probably entail performing a pretty specific and narrow role each day for the first year or two. This isn’t always the case, as some companies will give you the opportunity to sample different sectors within their organisation for a couple of months at a time, to give you a sense of where you best belong. This can be rare, though, and even sometimes remain unproductive. The insight and variety you are getting at larger companies can sometimes be hampered by the fact that graduates are merely getting a variety of tasters as opposed to actually worthwhile work experiences. Startups, on the other hand, work differently. You may well be hired for a specific role, but given that the team is probably smaller and people are relying on one another you will be called on to contribute to all kinds of decisions. This kind of hands-on experience with a variety of different decisions can soon give a graduate genuine experience in all different kinds of fields covering the whole business spectrum. This variety only gives a graduate more engagement with the company, whilst also developing their skills at a more rapid pace than if they were to work at a corporate company, for instance. It should also be noted that all these skills will, of course, be transferable were anyone to want to begin their own business, meaning entrepreneurial spirits would do well to join a startup in order to gain invaluable insight into starting a company.

Huge Opportunities

Obviously many startups, like Uber, Snapchat and Airbnb, didn’t exist that long ago and are now some of the biggest brand names in the world. This is a testament to the fact that startups can become huge and there is no reason that with hard work and a bit of luck that couldn’t be the startup you choose to join. More realistically, though, even if your startup does not become the mammoth corporation you might have hoped, it’s not unlikely that it will become a reasonably sized organisation where you will have had a huge part to play and are more likely to find yourself in a senior role at the right time. Most importantly, whatever route the startup takes it will be providing you with an unrivalled experience of the ins and outs of the business world. Whether the startup succeeds, is sold out, fails, goes bankrupt, whatever… if you are a graduate who wants to understand the business world, or even one day set up your own business, this will be a lesson unavailable anywhere else. However the startup progresses or doesn’t progress, you can learn so much from both the successes and failures. This insight and experience will leave any graduate capable of great success in their future careers.

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