By now, you probably know that you don’t have to be a programmer to work for a startup. Even at the tech-heaviest companies, other areas of expertise—like marketing, sales, and operations—are vital parts of the business.
But this doesn’t mean you can waltz in without a lick of relevant experience and a resume that’s blank except for your phone number, a charcoal sketch of Freud, and your rounded-up GPA. If you chose to study something that doesn’t directly translate to building a company (like I did!), and you can’t develop startup-relevant skills in the classroom, landing a startup job can seem a little daunting. But there’s good news: with a little strategizing and some elbow grease, a great startup job is well within your grasp. Here are a few of the things I wish I had known as a job-seeking philosophy-degree-addled 22-year-old.
You need more than potential—you need skills.
It’s great that you’re smart, curious, capable of crafting an argument, and interested in plumbing the depths of the human condition. That will serve you well, both in life and as a startup employee. But academic strength and real-world potential are rarely enough. You need to prove that you can actually do the job.
If this sounds harsh, or overly-demanding, try putting yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes. Let’s say you’ve started a business of your own, you have limited time and resources, and you want to hire someone to manage your company’s myriad social media accounts. You won’t be able to teach this person as much as you’d like—you’re extremely busy, other areas of the company need more attention, and you don’t even really understand what Snapchat is. But a robust social media presence is important for the growth of your business, and it has to be done well. At the end of a long day, you scroll through the application materials of two candidates:
Candidate A: A smart, curious recent grad with a passion for modernist literature, excellent grades, a thesis on Virginia Woolf for a writing sample, and no discernible startup-ready skills.
Candidate B: A smart, curious recent grad who has managed social media accounts for an on-campus club and a local restaurant, and has meticulously-documented data to back up her claims of social media prowess.
Like all processes that involve human decision making, hiring can be opaque and mysterious. Maybe someone with a soft spot for English majors will take a chance on Candidate A. These things happen! But most of the time, Candidate B will get the interview, because she has more than smarts, work-ethic, and potential—she has a demonstrated, relevant skill set.
Potential is not enough. But this is a surmountable problem! There are all kinds of ways to develop and prove your own skill set outside of the classroom.
1) First things first: learn about startup jobs!
To prepare yourself to work at a startup, it’s helpful to know what the work might actually look like. This one’s easy! A couple ways to go about it:
- Look at job descriptions for the kinds of jobs you’re interested in. Take note of the specific tasks you might be asked to perform, the platforms used to perform these tasks, and the skills you would need to develop in order to do the job well.
- Talk to people who have jobs that pique your interest. Find out what kind of work they do day-to-day, which of their skills have proved most valuable, and how they developed those skills. Don’t be shy about asking for informational interviews or quick coffee meetings—people love to talk about their experiences.
Now let’s talk about gaining those skills…
2) Get a job, join a club, volunteer for a nonprofit, or launch a side project—and be deliberate about the work you take on.
Set specific goals that will both help the organization and allow you to build specific skills. Tackle problems at your club or workplace in a way that suggests you could tackle problems at a company. If you have a job that’s not particularly startup-relevant, try to initiate some additional skill-building responsibilities on top of the work you’re already doing. A few ideas:
- Event planning: Initiate an event that encourages new audiences to engage with your club or company, or help make a recurring event bigger and better. Track number of attendees, resulting new customers, or any other data that proves your success.
- Social media: Make a plan to build your organization’s social media following. Track data.
- Crowdfunding: Plan a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for an event, project, or product. And, you guessed it: quantitatively document your success.
3) Strengthen your skills—and your resume—by helping family or friends for free/cheap.
You probably know someone who 1) owns a small business and 2) could really use some help. Immerse yourself in online tutorials, and then try tackling projects like these:
- SEO: Help a small businesses owner or blogger optimize their website, and track website traffic over time to assess your work.
- Social media: Help a freelancer develop and implement a social media strategy. Track growth.
- Graphic design: Design logos, business cards, letterhead, and anything else you can think of. Suddenly, you’re a freelance graphic designer!
All of these projects are in the marketing sphere—but this principle can be widely applied. Find ways to add value, do as many projects as you can, and track your results.
4) Work on your own projects with an eye towards getting hired.
Develop and showcase your skills by building something for yourself: a consistent, well-executed blog (track those analytics!); a carefully thought-out portfolio website; you get the picture.
5) Intern at a startup (if you can).
This isn’t feasible for everyone—but if you manage to find a paid internship, can wrangle funding from your school, or find that it’s financially viable for you to work for free, interning at a startup is a top-notch way to gain relevant experience.
6) Get your foot in the door via a less-than-perfect role, and learn on the job.
These days, I’m the marketing manager at VFA—but that’s not what I was initially hired to do. When I joined, I had a philosophy degree, a few years of publishing experience, and very little marketing know-how, so I started as a part-time contractor and helped out with odd jobs. During my first few months, I assembled IKEA furniture, ferried checks to the bank, and took sandwich orders for team lunches. But I consistently asked for more work, learned on the fly, and took on additional projects—and less than six months later was offered a full-time job on the marketing team.
This is anecdotal, and not every company places such a high value on the growth and development of its contractors or employees. But at most workplaces—especially startups, which skew lean and understaffed, with gaps that need to be filled—there’s opportunity to take on additional work, learn, grow, and prove that you can add value in an area that you’re genuinely interested in, no matter what you were initially hired to do.
So there you have it!
No matter what you studied, you can build skills that will help you land the right job at a startup—and excel once you’re there.
Learn about startup jobs. Gain skills and experience by taking on projects deliberately—and then carefully track the results. And don’t mention your senior thesis during your interview unless you have, like, a really good reason.