MONEY & ENTERTAINMENT

When you are shopping around for your first job, or for a new job, one of the decisions you have to make is whether you are going to focus on getting your foot in the door at a large company or get your career started working within a small company. Both sizes offer different benefits (financial and professional) and different paths to helping you get to where you are going in your career.
Size MattersSalary/Benefits
If your primary focus is making the maximum amount of money, then there are two points to consider. You may start a little higher up the pay scale when you start at a large business because they will be up-to-date with current salary trends as well as have the resources to accommodate those trends. They want to stay competitive and you may able to use that to negotiate a higher starting salary.
Smaller businesses have fewer resources and so they might be offering less for a comparative job at the larger company. On the other hand, big companies may have a more rigid schedule for raises. For instance, they may have a policy in which you cannot ask for a raise before a certain amount of time has passed. Even those raises might also be harder to get due to bureaucracy. Since you will be working under a boss who also has a boss (and so on), your request will have to travel through several layers of bureaucracy in before it is even considered. Even then, having no first-hand knowledge of your work, the person who makes the decision will likely be doing so based on the financial position of the company rather than your merit.
When you work for a small company, your boss most likely to be the head of the company. This means that any salary requests you have will go straight to the person who is in charge, but also who has direct knowledge of what you have contributed to the company.
Training
When you are entering a new company, one thing to consider is the training potential. If you are at the beginning of your career, this is an even more important consideration. You want to start in a job that is going to strengthen your pre-existing skills, but, more importantly, teach you something new about your field.
Working in a small company has many benefits in this regard. Because small companies have fewer employees, it is important to cross-train many employees to take over various tasks. For instance, a large company will likely have both a human resources department and an accounting department, whereas one person might take care of both of these responsibilities in a smaller company. You will have the opportunity to build both skill sets, making you more marketable if you decide to move on.
If you start as an intern at a large company, chances are that, unless someone takes you under their wing or you are very aggressive in pursuing knowledge, you might be stuck doing really low-level drudgery. If you intern at a smaller company, chances are good that people will be scrambling to teach you their stuff so you can give them some support. The more you know about different aspects of a business, the easier it will be to figure out where your interests and talent lie.
If you are hoping to open your own business one day, your access to the various pieces of a business, and even to the CEO of the company itself, will provide you with the opportunity to find out the skills needed and time commitment required to sta

---

---

---

rt and maintain your own business.
One area in which large companies may have more resources is providing access to professional development opportunities such as conferences (for networking and learning) or courses to upgrade your skills. Many larger companies have funds devoted to professional development, which you should take full advantage of.
Workload
Because there are fewer employees at a small company, your workload might be slightly heavier. The increased responsibility you will have at a smaller company will be a double-edged sword in some ways. While it will provide you the opportunity to learn tons, it will also mean that you will have more on your plate than at a larger company where your role is more defined.
On the other hand, most people I know who work for larger companies are much less invested in the work, so the overtime that they invariably put in is usually more tedious because it no often goes unnoticed and unappreciated.
Mobility
There is no doubt that mobility is limited in a smaller company. The consequence of working so closely with the boss of the company is that there is not a lot of room to move from your starting job to a higher position. Often, your boss is often the owner of the small company you work for, and consequently, chances are slim that you will be taking over his or her job one day!
In a larger company, you have space to move in all sorts of directions. If you are happy in the company, but unhappy in your division or department, you can move laterally until you find a more suitable situation. You can even be transferred to fulfill a dream of working abroad. More often, however, the focus is on moving up. When you work in a large company, there are so many levels of management, that you can strive to hit them as milestones throughout your career.
Job Satisfaction
Whether or not you enjoy your job has as much to do with the people around you and your personal stake in the place as it does to do with the objective variables. In a smaller company, because you are involved in different facets of production and can see a larger picture, often your heightened responsibility fosters more of a personal stake in the company. That is, you feel as though your contribution has a tangible effect on the success of the company and therefore you want to hold up your end. Working for a smaller company also means that you are personally invested in some of the people whose lives depend on this company working, and it inspires you to do your best.
While large companies tend to inspire less loyalty due to the anonymity many may feel, they do provide more varied social opportunities. You have the chance to make connections within your department, or even bitch about your department to other departments. People who rub you the wrong way are more easily avoided. Let’s face it: we’ve all stayed at a crappy job because we love our co-workers. People make a big difference in your daily work life.
The culture of small and large businesses are very different and you may feel an immediate affinity for one or the other. Some feel that working at a small business first, and then taking the range of skills you learned there to move into a larger company on a higher rung than where you might have started is a sage move. However you plot your career moves, the best fit will be the one that satisfies your primary employment goals, be they financial, professional or emotional.

go to archives