Most business school graduates—while looking for internship opportunities or hunting for their first job—seek for various banks and financial institutions, or well-established corporate conglomerates. It is freshers’ natural tendency to associate themselves with an acclaimed employer in order to build a strong foundation for their career. Along with a strong brand name and fame, they will also get to enjoy good amount of pay-checks and perks with such companies. However, on the other side of the continuum, our recent experiences show there are fresh graduates who are ready to sacrifice all the hefty perks and benefits for an adventurous journey—working for startups!

Working for startup companies might not earn you a “handsome” remuneration; it neither has job security, nor comes with the strong ‘brand’ name you would want to be associated with. But if you dare take the risk, it’s a wonderful platform to shine. The startup trend in Nepal has boomed in the recent years, and they are lacking competent human resources.

Below are five reasons (based completely on personal experiences) on why you might want to consider a change, and think of working for startups.

LESS FORMAL WORK ENVIRONMENT
Generally, startup companies have a handful of employees, and they do not usually have a strict and rigid working environment, rules and regulations, either. Most startups are flexible with the work timings, too, not bothering about when the employees come in and when they leave as long as they complete their assignments and produce results. You might even get rid of formal wears and go to work wearing your most comfortable casual jeans.

LEARNING WITH FUN
When it’s about internship or your first job, learning is definitely your priority. The relatively smaller number of workforce in such companies allows you to interact with everyone there. While it depends largely on how much you’re willing to learn, working in a startup firm does give you ample opportunities to become skilled at a lot of things. Thanks to close interaction with everyone at work, learning is fun, unlike in bigger companies where it can get slightly intimidating.

LEARN EVERYTHING FROM SCRATCH
In an established corporate house, you will be placed in one department of which you are expected to know, or eventually learn, everything. However, in most startup companies, one employee often performs duties in various functional areas. For example, a marketing manager of a startup company might also be handling all the finances, and also entertaining telephone calls as a receptionist. This not only gives fresh employees an opportunity to learn everything—from customer query handling to advertising, and even managing the office’s petty cash, but also practically teaches them how to exploit the most out of given resources to achieve maximum output.

MORE TRANSPARENCY
Working for multinational companies might give you a great exposure, but it will not necessarily teach you the vitals of the organization. For instance, a big corporate house will neither disclose its internal accounts to a fresher, nor reveal how much profit it really makes and distributes. Working for a startup company makes these things transparent. You will have the opportunity to learn how to really calculate and file VATs at the Inland Revenue Department, adjust advance income taxes, know more about TDS and so on. These numbers are the darkest secrets for large organizations, but you really know what is going on when working for a startup.

IMPLEMENT YOUR IDEAS
Decisions are quickly taken in startup companies thanks to less sophisticated organizational structure. In large organizations, before you implement any new idea, you will require permission from your supervisor, then get it approved from his/her manager, and finally get it sanctioned from the Chief Executive Officer. These complex structures simply do not exist in startup companies. You might be working directly under the founding member or a director of the startup organization. This eliminates all the lengthy process of decision making when it comes to hearing and implementing new ideas. Additionally, the probability of your ideas being valued is much higher in a startup company than in a large corporation. You will just need to pitch your idea and convince the founders.

So, while everyone else is eyeing for a job at big corporate houses and following the herd, why don’t you take opt for a different road to glory?

The author is associated with Jobs Dynamics Pvt Ltd, an organization driven towards providing the widest range of job solutions to people looking for work in Nepal. He can be reached at prayas@jobsdynamics.com.

 
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