How to get your First Start-up Job in 3 Steps!

Описание: 3 Steps to get your first startup job/internship!

Around three years I was a fresh faced university student looking to seize every opportunity available too me, but I still wasn’t sure what direction I was going in. Studying accounting and finance I was heavily pushed the ideas of corporate finance, auditing and trading markets. After talking to some of the people working for these organisations I realised that my motivations were far different. I wanted a different challenge to work in a fast growing, innovative company.

But I had no idea what working in a start-up was like, and the only way to find out would be diving in. So I found my “why”, I wanted to experience working in a startup and understand what makes a successful startup.

1. Understand WHY you want to go for a startup vs a big corporate

This is something you will have to weigh up yourself based on your own experiences and motivations. Some of the pros for me where: My decisions hold more weight, I had greater accountability and quicker career progression. Some of the cons where: start-up businesses are more unstable, I had greater accountability (a pro and a con!) and a less defined career path.

2. Understand your Strengths and Passions

Ask yourself these questions:

What industries interest you? Finance, food, property, health and lifestyle? All of these areas have many companies trying to innovate in their space, you want to be involved in something that intrigues you and you want to be a part of.

What are your strengths? Tech? Programming? Marketing - creating blog, video content or copyrighting? Are you a people person? Perhaps sales and recruitment focusing on business growth are your strengths?

What is your “Why?” is it because you want the challenge of working for a smaller company? Or perhaps understand how smaller companies grow before you start your own business? Whatever it is, decide on what you want to get out of the experience and be completely honest about your motivations with the company you want work with.

3. Make yourself standout

Now you know your interests, you know your motivations and your why, the next step is to find companies!

Simply finding a job post and submitting your CV & cover letter exponentially reduces your chances of success. Most of the time especially if you have no experience companies will glance over your CV along with the 100’s of others in a matter of seconds (trust me, I work in employee growth and a first impression is key!).
Thats why it is so important to meet the people that make these decisions to standout. That is why the form of communication is KEY.

I break down communication in two ways: you have the warm approach (best way) and the cold approach.

In the warm approach use the Immediate network around you, friends, family, ex-university students, meetups (see meetup.com), events, etc...

Introduce yourself to people at these events and build a connection with these people, ask them questions about what their company does, what their aspirations are, who they are working with… you want to impress the founders and decision makers through your enthusiasm and interest.

Let them know about your motivations and offer to stay in touch. Get their LinkedIn/email and follow up the next day whilst you are fresh on their mind and ask to have a call with them to talk about opportunities.

If you don’t call you can still message and it be successful. Trust me, I got two internships and job starting with a message like this!

Cold approach:

Type in ‘London VC’s' or 'London incubators' and choose one of the top results.
Find the portfolio companies on their website or if they have a careers portal
Scan these companies and research ones that interest you
Find someone that works for the company, message them on LinkedIn asking to have a call so you can ask some questions of what it is like working there. The key here is QUALITY greater than QUANTITY
Let them know your intention straight away “I wanted to have call to learn more about your company as I am thinking of applying for position x”

3. Make Yourself Standout

Throughout this process you want to make yourself stand out with a true get up and go attitude. Be proactive and think how at each step you can go above and beyond to understand more about the company and why it's worth their investment to hire you.

Remember:
Be Confident
Ask lots of questions (you don't need to know all the answers)
Always be honest

Good luck and I hope you manage to get your first start-up job in no time! Trust me you won't regret it ;)!

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