Need a Job? Here's How to Get One at an Entrepreneurial Company

You might have read my blog post from a few weeks ago, about the JumpStart TechLift Advisors' panel discussion directed toward current college students and recent grads, entitled "Starting Your Career at an Entrepreneurial Technology Company". The event featured CEOs from two small, entrepreneurial companies, Ron Zieske of Heat Seal, and Andy Sherman of Powdermet/MesoCoat, along with Megan Mealy, head of college recruiting at Rosetta. The panel was rounded out by three recent grads who are now working in entrepreneurial environments: Jeff Bargiel (Case Western) who is in business development at PhyCal, Liz Mather (Stevens Institute of Technology), a Product Manager at US Endoscopy, and Leslie Matt (University of Akron) who is a Marketing Coordinator at Knotice. Halley Marsh of NOCHE moderated the panel. The event was sold out, with over 70 people in attendance. The discussion was lively, and the questions kept coming from the audience of mostly 20-somethings who wanted to know how to connect with small companies, how to get the job, and what the environment and expectations are like once you're in.  Here are some of the top takeaways and comments from the panelists: How Do I Connect with Entrepreneurial Companies?

• The most important message was that you need to reach out to the small companies. They will not always be in the places where one typically looks for jobs like Monster.com, hotjobs.com, the classifieds, etc.
• Watch the business section of the paper to see which companies have received funding, gotten a big customer order or are announcing something. This indicates that they are active and are more likely to be hiring.
• Join free on-line newsletters in the industries you are interested in...it is a great way to keep up with the industry, and to know who is active. An example would be MDD in medical devices, but every industry has many newsletters for each of its sub-sectors.
• Join other, more general newsletters and news services like Crain's Cleveland Business online, and even Cool Cleveland.
• Find and connect directly with the right person within the organization. One of the recent grads told the story of how she kept digging until she got the email address for the company's Marketing VP. She got a job that was not even slated for a recent grad, but the VP was impressed by her aggressiveness and decided to consider her.
• Your cover letter should say something specific about the company (i.e. markets, technology, business model). Standard cover letters, obviously "cut and pasted" can be a turn off.
• Something on your resume, like internship experience or technology specifics, should stand out to get your resume put into the "consider" pile.
• Realize that timing is everything with small companies. If they don't have funding, they probably cannot hire you right now, even if they love you. They also often aren't as organized in their approach as larger companies. The opportunity is for the right candidate to "just appear" at the right time, with the right message, and the right skill set.

• One employer stressed the need for the candidate to tell the company how they could affect their bottom line -- pretty direct.
• Know your elevator pitch and sell yourself on your added value. Be able to relate your skills, attributes and background to the company's situation.
• Respect an entrepreneur's time and don't waste it. Every sentence in your cover letter should be concise and meaningful.
• Be genuinely interested in what the person or company does.Employers can tell right away who is truly interested, and who is just desperate for a job.
• Do your homework. If you come to the interview without finding out everything you possibly could about the company (much easier today with internet resources), you are unlikely to get the job.
• Although small companies don't have the time or budget to train you, they tend to like direct relevant experience, which works against a recent graduate. Despite that, a high potential recent grad often has a huge advantage, because they carry lower price tags, salary-wise, will work lots of hours, and don't come with "baggage" from previous employers.

• Small companies require you to be flexible, to figure things out for yourself, and be a person who doesn't need a lot of structure.
• You will likely take on more responsibility in an entrepreneurial company. You need to be up to that challenge.
• You aren't going to get the same level of training and processes that you would get in a larger company environment. This is a tradeoff, as this experience is often valuable in your toolset. It is balanced, however, by the fact that you get to do more things, more quickly in an entrepreneurial company than you would otherwise.
• Be willing to "break the rules" -- all of the employers and recent hires told stories about how people in their companies used creativity and sometimes off-beat approaches to problems. It doesn't mean that you do "crazy things", as that could lead to big problems, but that you tend to not take "no" for an answer, and that you can think your way through things.
• The entrepreneurial company is not for everyone, and is not always the best first career experience. That said, there are tremendous opportunities in small companies, and it is certainly a path that each college graduate should consider.