When I started the job hunt back in January, I had no idea I would end up at a startup. During my three years at BU, I only ever considered large companies and agencies, as that’s where I thought I could get the best experience starting out after school. It wasn’t until I had a some talks with a few dear friends and mentors that I entertained the possibility that startup life might be for me.
Three months and a day into this fabulous startup, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. I have had the most amazing, crazy and energizing experience working for Shareaholic. This isn’t the honeymoon effect—even three months in, you’ve got to love what you do to get up at 5 a.m. to crank out another blog post or spend time on the weekends checking in with your company’s Twitter account.
As classes are starting up again and many December graduates are beginning the job hunt, I thought I’d weigh in as a recent grad and offer some advice on why startups are the most awesome places to work, ever.
You have ownership of projects. As a recent grad, I never thought I’d be in charge of a blog that has posts five times a week or a Facebook page with almost 30,000 fans. I absolutely love having large projects that are my own—it makes me feel like a real asset to the team. The best part about owning your work is that you can much more easily measure the success of your own efforts.
Your ideas get heard. Sometimes you just need to feel like people are listening to your ideas. As a new grad, I was concerned that the company I worked for would not take my ideas seriously because of my age. Startups are always looking to grow, so they are not about to discredit an idea from you just because you’re a new college grad. Not all of your ideas will be golden, but at least you’ll get feedback on why your idea wouldn’t work and learn from the experience.
You get to do stuff outside your job description. This is one of my favorite aspects of startup life. As a Marketing Manager, I create a ton of content about our sharing and discovery tools. Outside my job description, I also get involved in company events (like the MIT Career Fair on September 21–come say hi!), customer development, graphic design and metrics. Having this breadth in experience is infinitely valuable, especially if you find that you don’t like what you are doing in your first job and decide to move into a different position.
You are allowed to make mistakes. In college, I was taught that making mistakes would result in a devastating, career-ending disaster that everyone would remember forever. While some mistakes are more heinous than others, making mistakes usually isn’t a bad thing. The best part of making mistakes is that you can learn from them. In my three months here, I’ve made plenty of mistakes and grown immensely from them.
Ultimately, I’m grateful to have an inspiring team, a growing industry and a fabulous product to work with. It’s been a wild ride for the past three months—I can’t wait to see what the next ones hold.
Want to build a product that reaches 300 million people each month? We’re hiring!