So you’ve advertised a position for a role in your company, you’ve got a set of key selection criteria you need filled and are looking over the applications flooding into your inbox.
You notice one person who has operated their own business, successfully sold it, and is now looking at entering paid employment. Before you slip the application to the bottom of the pile, or worse still, delete it from your inbox, consider what hiring an entrepreneur could mean for your company.
Whereas the majority of potential applicants might fit comfortably into the job description that you wrote and you can sit back and let them dutifully fulfil their role, entrepreneurs will go above and beyond what you expected with their natural disposition to solve problems and create solutions to problems that other employees are unlikely to even consider. Sometimes hiring someone who ticks the boxes is a limiting strategy.
One entrepreneur I know sold a business he’d grown from nothing to achieving a multi million dollar turnover, yet once on the job market couldn’t get an interview. He had no ‘formal qualifications’ (apparently what employers are looking for) yet everything he’d built for himself had turned to gold. After months of searching he gave up trying to convince employers to hire him and instead launched another business which is currently on track to establish him as an industry leader. By not hiring him, companies have missed out on the opportunity to be the leader themselves.
Another woman I spoke to has launched and sold two successful marketing companies yet was told that she “didn’t have enough experience” that the marketing firm was looking for.
When are employers going to realise the benefits of bringing entrepreneurs into their teams and acknowledge the skills that entrepreneurs have to drive unprecedented growth?
As I search for a job myself, I am confronted with the same biases. I don’t fit into a nice little box. One recruiter recently commented “you are amazing, but I just don’t know how to sell you to an employer given your wide range of skills of marketing, training, business development, content creation and educational background”.
Whilst my journey to find a new job continues I hope to find an employer that recognises that innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, a desire to kick goals, a broad skill set, and an unrelenting drive to succeed is of great benefit and should be snapped up.
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About the Author
Bronwyn Eager has a passion for all things entrepreneurial.
With a hunger for learning, self-development and finding solutions to complex problems, Bronwyn believes that you can become anything you want with access to the right information.
With the successful sale of a small business under her belt, Bronwyn is now studying towards a PhD (examining how entrepreneurs can effectively cope with stress to buffer themselves against burnout), writes, and consults to business owners throughout Melbourne in marketing, stress management and growth strategies.
Agree Bronwyn…. I have heard many times that employers shy away from employing those who have been self-employed. As with you, I think we have much to offer in not only skills and knowledge but also in attitude – which to me is a standout attribute that can outweigh skills and knowledge on occasion.
This is the truest of true. I’m starting to realize that employers don’t want applicants that can fulfill and far exceed expectation, they just want to ‘fill the boxes’ as to have the daily grind task completed. If you show potential of exceeding these requirements they are concerned about your longevity with their companies, and the intellectual and financial investment they invest if they can perceive and project you out growing them. We are an entrepreneurial generation who want to contribute to the work force and be an integral part of our community but opportunities are preferred to even keel personas with a good record, not a progressive attitude.
My favorite saying is make your own dreams come true, other wise you just end up working towards someone else’s.
Of course, I agree with you all, as I’d really, really love to be an ‘acceptable’ person in a job market, that thing we use to validate ourselves. And it’s much more than inconvenient to not be selected for a job because I have too *much* experience.
HowEVA…
The best high-growth strategies are disruptive. This best disruptive strategies propose new, untested markets. This is the pointed end of why innovation is so hard to achieve within conventional organisations: they exist to provide incremental growth in established markets with minimal risk.
An entrepreneur at her best is a disruptive, distracting, independent energy within an organisation, who will want to take risks and to dismantle established protocols or create a need for resources that would be pulled out of predictable but low-earning products and services.
Let’s be honest. Millions of organisations need the growth we could provide. But we get that growth by being the opposite of a good employee. It takes wisdom and patience from both sides to get that to work.
Thanks for the great article, Bronwyn.