Blog - Jobs in Small Business

It seems that one of the only items of clarity offered by the Obama administration is their commitment to support small business and the importance of entrepreneurs to the economy.  It is our belief that small business, particularly women owned small business, will be the engine that brings back the economy because small businesses are more flexible, less restricted by overhead, unions and health care burdens.  A new survey of National Association of Women Business Owners® (NAWBO®) members has found that, while women entrepreneurs are facing the same economic difficulties as other businesses across the country, more than half say they have no plans to reduce employment and nearly 25 percent say they actually plan to add jobs this year.

There is a unique skill set and different cultural environment that exists for small business so this job transition, from big corporations who are firing to small business who are hiring, can be difficult for some. Here are 5 things to know that can help you make that transition:

Flexibility.  With big corporations, job descriptions and expectations are laid out clearly.  Human resources spend much time and effort defining job roles, organizational charts and reporting structures.  In smaller businesses this almost never happens.  You might be hired for marketing and find yourself working on an operational issue, one day you are working on one strategy and the next you are going in a completely different direction. As cliché as it sounds, you have to expect the unexpected and be prepared to go in new directions and you can't be above anything, from taking out the trash to making copies.

Example:  I interviewed one potential employee from a very large and esteemed credit card company and she kept telling me "I want to make sure I have ownership over one part of the business."  I tried to explain to her that it was impossible for me to give her "ownership" and that while I could hire her under one job description one day, the next week it could be all hands on deck for an important project and everything could change. Ultimately, I decided that she wouldn't be able to make the transition.

Accountability.  You can't hide in a small business.  I have lots of friends who get a lot of their personal work done during office hours at big corporations, in a small business everyone notices everything you are doing and pays close attention to your results; dead weight is very obvious.

Example: I once had an employee in sales who wasn't producing at the level we expected, one day she announced to the entire staff (all sitting in an open office) that she is going for a manicure.  She came back 1 1/2 hours later announcing that it took longer than she expected because she decided to get a pedicure too.  Not only did this disrupt the office, but I really couldn't believe that she thought it was good judgment to do that in front of me, the owner/founder.  She was released.

Budgeting.  Small businesses carefully scrutinize every single penny they spend, they are much more careful with their money than large corporations.  Often, the money you are spending is straight out of the owners or investors pocket so they are paying extra close attention. Forget expense accounts or first class travel, forget IT departments that come work on your computer whenever you need, even forget fully stocked supply cabinets.  If a small business isn't being thrifty, you as an employee should be concerned.

Example: I once asked an employee to order more color ink for our copier, coming from a larger corporation she thought it was a good idea to order 20 cartridges and stock up, which worked out to around $2,000.  As this was an unexpected expense, and we didn't even know how long the cartridges would last, we canceled the order.

Creativity.  In a large corporation sometimes creativity can be threatening while in a small business it is not only valued but expected.  In a large corporation, in many cases the big creativity happened when they were a small business, and now they are making incremental changes on the original business strategy or idea; a large disruptive change is not what they are looking for and would be seen as bad.  In a small company, creativity means survival and standing out in the market place, there is more of a willingness to try new things and take risks.

Example:  While working for a large cosmetic empire, I was trying to get a secret shopping program implemented to measure the customer experience at the department store counter so we could develop better training programs for the counter staff.  At the Manager level, I had to go through over 6 levels, all the way up to the President of the company, to get the budget and approval to make this happen.  My one idea took months to implement.  As an entrepreneur I or one of my partners/employees has an idea and it can literally happen moments later.

Stability.  It used to be that large corporations were seen as stable and small businesses risky, but these days I would say both are equally risky.   It is hard to think of any completely stable industry or profession.

Example: With unemployment rising weekly, there are enough examples everywhere!  All I can say is that in a small business owners are much closer to their employees and therefore the decision to layoff much more excruciating.  Also, because small businesses do not have to respond to shareholders they often have more control over their decision making process and can make creative adjustments.