Maybe you’re about to graduate college and head out into the “real” world, or maybe you’ve been working for years and are ready for a career change. Either way, we’re pretty sure you don’t want to spend 40+ hours of your week confined to a cubicle for the rest of your life. The solution? Land a job at a startup; many feature open office plans, free snacks and booze, flexible hours, and casual dress codes.
Here are 7 tips to help you escape your cubicle and find meaningful work.
1) Start within arm’s reach.
Products and services that you already use, know, and love are great places to begin your application process. The ability to have a knowledgeable conversation about a company’s offerings is a sure-fire attention-grabber.
2) Bookmark these pages!
The search continues for the holy grail of an updated and highly curated startup job board for all fields. In the meantime, we recommend exploring the following:
- Developers/Tech – Careers 2.0, GitHub, Dice, Hacker News
- Design – Behance, Coroflot, Dribbble, AIGA
- General – Mashable, VentureLoop, Startuply, and—of course—Uncubed.
… and don’t forget companies’ own websites, job boards, LinkedIn pages, Twitter profiles, and Facebook pages.
3) Don’t forget to tip.
Now that you’re well-versed on both the company and its offerings, come up with one great suggestion for how they can improve, or one new feature you would add. Startups love this. (Careful not to be a harsh critic, though.)
4) Talk to strangers.
Involve yourself in local, professional communities through Meetups for entrepreneurs, startup enthusiasts, coders, designers, and others in your field of interest. Reach out to companies and professionals directly for coffee meetings and informational interviews. In no time, you’ll have a budding network in the startup space.
5) Do it yourself.
Bulk up your résumé, skills, network, and confidence beyond internships and the classroom. Freelance work, passion projects, volunteering, competitions, and classes are all great ways to become more hirable.
6) Skip the blind dates.
Do your homework on each company before meeting or applying for a job with them. Scour their websites, blogs, social media presences, and articles written about them (or by their team members). This is much more important at startups than at large companies.
7) Ditch the tie; perfect your ping pong serve.
The clichés of startup life are clichés for a reason. Scrap the corporate culture and dress code, and understand there’s a new sheriff in these here parts: one who wears jeans, T-shirts, and rolls into the office some time between 9 AM and noon (offset by hours that can run late into the evening, of course).
Armed with these skills you can officially ditch your cube.
If you’re on the hunt for a startup job in LA, head to LA Uncubed on Friday, January 30. There will be 300+ jobs offered from the city’s fastest-growing startups like Tinder, SpaceX, Media Temple, and Whisper. Plus, founders and C-levels will be teaching skills classes throughout the day that can help you gain the competitive advantage in your job search.
