The truth is, not everyone has the tenacity to work at a brand new company. It takes a particular kind of employee to work at a brand new company in its very early days.
As much as startups can be very exciting adventures, they’re also challenging and unpredictable.
However, one thing is certain, startups are filled with learning opportunities that can positively affect career growth.
Thinking about joining a startup? Here are a few of the very many relevant strategies and skills you’ll need.
Tolerance to ambiguity
Unlike most jobs that come with a description of duties and tasks, you’ll perform, startups don’t restrict you to certain tasks or job descriptions.
This is because the needs of the business dictate your duties and what you’ll be doing as well as your job title.
The chances your job descriptions will change day-to-day are exceptionally high.
In very early stage teams, the all hands on deck practices are common and you’re guaranteed a bunch of different hats or tasks that are not within the confines of your comfort zone or area of expertise.
Context drift
Open offices and technology have made context shifting unavoidable as almost every employee in today’s workforce is constantly switching between task and high interruption environments.
With startups, it’s on a whole new level. Each team member takes on a number of different roles and everyone can work on just about anything due to the small team size.
To many employees, this stage of the business is empowering and exciting, having a broad sphere of authority and control.
Freed from the bureaucracy of regular and traditional settings, tasks are accomplished at lightning speed.
Ideation
Startups often begin with a grand idea, but imagination is always needed a little later down the road.
Bumps are a guarantee and challenges are inevitable. So, you’ll need a bit of creativity and a knack for the invention of new processes and approaches in order to face these issues and discover different solutions.
It might interest you to know that the popular messaging tool, Slack started out as a video game and failed before it got reinvented into what it is now.
There are a handful of stories of startups that made it become successful after a major shift and pivot. Creativity, ideation and imagination is all.
Entrepreneurial spirit
Starting out my career as a content writer, I remember I wasn’t briefed on the current company status and neither was I given an angle. I was only told to observe and decide to write about what would boost the perception of the company.
Everything was up to me. Looking back now, I am grateful for that experience because it helped me develop an entrepreneurial spirit.
Startups aren’t any different. You might have a rough idea of what to do, but nobody is going to spoon feed you or tell you what to do and how to do it.
Many times, there won’t be any processes or guidelines spelt out. You’ll have to figure most things out on your own and decide what, how and when to do stuff.
Don’t miss important articles during the week. Subscribe to techbuild weekly digest for updates
