Why you should work for an SME

Start your career small, with lots of flexibility and opportunity for growth, if you want success. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • At Centonomy, people who were initially employed for administrative tasks have found themselves travelling round the country speaking to large audiences.
  • An accounting function in a large company is very different from the same job at an SME.

Are you looking for a job? Are you an SME looking for good people? Then this article is for you.

I am sure that right now, multinational companies are inundated with job applications. That’s not the case with SMEs because not that many people are showing interest in us. What they don’t realise is that we have an offer of value that goes unrecognised.

You will learn a lot. You will get an all-round experience without the fear of stepping on somebody’s toes.

At Centonomy, people who were initially employed for administrative tasks have found themselves travelling round the country speaking to large audiences. An accounting function in a large company is very different from the same job at an SME.

You will know how to do sales budgets not because reports were delivered to your desk, but because you also happened to be on the ground selling or witnessing sales. It could be as simple as the fact that the sales person got sick that day and you happened to be the one in the office.

The show needed to go on. Your accounting figures are therefore from experience. The learning curve is very steep at SME’s but very rewarding.

Growth. In SMEs the boss is extremely happy (not threatened) when you take work off their shoulders. You will have the freedom to use your skills be they creativity, execution, communication, to add value.

The decision maker is usually a desk or corridor away and you don’t have to go through layers of people to get your voice heard or ideas implemented.

In SME’s you may have come in to do one function but along the way discovered what your passion or strengths are and chances are you will be given the opportunity to build on them. Since the people who run the business are so connected to failure- after all they’ve come this far by failing so many times- they don’t treat failure as the end. We take the lesson and move on. In fact, at times we celebrate it.

We understand your need for balance and personal time.  Flexi time is real. The focus is on results and not how many hours you spent in the office. I know a business where they have simply decided to all not come to the office on Friday.

They are more productive than ever. If you join a start up there may be no office to even talk about so flexi time and remote working is an immediate benefit.

SMEs are more in touch with purpose.  Big companies spend huge amounts of money on crafting vision and mission statements that over 90 per cent of the work force don’t remember.

In the SME world we may not always have the perfect elevator pitch words, but people seem to have a good idea of why the business does what it does, the impact it has and a desire to be part of it.

You find people who run and are engaged with that business as if it was their own.

FASTER GROWTH

Remember, not everything is hunky dory.  SMEs cannot pay you as much especially when they are in their early stage, but growth of income tends to happen faster.

There are people who have given such value to these businesses that they became shareholders or get a profit share so the long term benefits are much higher than a salary. There will be smaller resources, teams, budgets etc. to work with but you do become very efficient and creative. Also SMEs struggle with lack of systems and processes. Let’s just say they will have problems that need problem solvers.

Are you one of them and willing to get a different work experience? Experience with SMEs can accelerate you when you go work in the corporate world or start your own business because of all rounded exposure.

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If you would like to learn how to package yourself and look at your potential career differently, contact Waceke on [email protected]|Facebook/WacekeNduati| Twitter@cekenduati