Here’s the thing that nobody else will tell you: the world is weird—especially for job seekers and entrepreneurs. Here’s why: there is a ton of emphasis and pressure being put on people to start small companies and to shop and do business with the small businesses in your town or city. This pressure has increased the demand on those small businesses and, unfortunately most entrepreneurs and small companies simply don’t have the capital to hire everybody they need to hire to meet that demand. So what do they do? They outsource.
This is important for you to understand as a job seeker. Why? Because while one of your goals might be to jump on a small company’s bandwagon before they “make it big,” most of the time that company won’t have the money to hire you. So if working for a small or family owned business really is your goal, you need to work for one of the companies that they are likely to hire.
Here are the three major fields in which small business growth is being outsourced (which, by proxy, means you have the best chances of finding employment).
Accounting and Financial Tasks
Most entrepreneurs and small business owners haven’t had the proper financial training to manage their own accounting and payroll. Even those who have gone through that training often choose to outsource to companies like ADP.com because they simply don’t have the time to deal with wage payments and payroll costs.
IT Tasks
In an age when everything is technology-driven, small business owners need people who can keep all of their technological devices up and running, and keep their data safe. As an IT professional, you know exactly how much your services cost and you know that those high rates are why most entrepreneurs and small businesses outsource IT work to companies like CrossLoop or Tech Guru.
Web Development and Social Media Management
Creating, hosting and updating a company website is a full-time job, and you (understandably) charge a premium for the services you offer. Unfortunately, most companies can’t afford to hire you full time…and really, with your skills, wouldn’t you get bored working on a single website and social presence every single day? It’s better to contract through a web development company. You’ll be given multiple projects to manage and drastically reduce your chances of getting bored (which would likely feed into complacency and slack).
It is in web development that the whole “working for small local businesses” idea really gets to come into play because most new businesses prefer to work with local web development firms to get their sites up and running. So, while working for a national firm might seem great because you’ll be allowed to telecommute, why not try your hand with your local web management firms? These companies are notorious for taking on more business than they can handle. Even if you don’t get a full time position right away, you can likely talk your way into a few contract jobs or freelance projects and then you can use those to leverage yourself into a full time position later, when they have the budget to bring on another employee.
It sounds convoluted, we know, to talk about working for third party firms instead of a single company. In this economy, though, you need to go to where the jobs are and these third party firms offer the most promise—particularly in the financial, IT and web development fields.
Good luck!
