How to transition from owner to employee
Dear Sam:
I had my own business for more than 25 years and grew it to $3 million in sales. While this sounds good, unfortunately it required my attention with every facet of the business. Therefore, I consider myself good at many things, but not good enough in any one specific area to compete as a subject-matter expert. One of the issues I face is a stigma in the potential employer’s mind of “Can this person work for anyone after being their own boss?” What advice can you provide former business owners seeking to become employees?
Dear John:
Congratulations on the success of your business. As you mentioned, there is a potential stigma surrounding a business owner/entrepreneur. Typically, entrepreneurs are engaged by challenges and quickly move on when the challenge has been overcome; they like autonomy, they prefer to make the rules and have thrived in environments they have created. Some also assume an entrepreneur’s desire to be an employee will be short-lived, and perhaps just a stopping point on the journey toward a new engagement. All of these characteristics cause concern for hiring managers attempting to recruit and retain talent.
As an entrepreneur, one of the most important things you can do is figure out how to position yourself. As you mentioned, you are a generalist; you have done a little of everything. To compete more effectively and more successfully, define your target, meaning figure out what you want to do and tailor your resume to make you look more like a specialist. Doing this will likely mean you have two and possibly more versions of your resume — with select pieces of your background included versus omitted depending on the target — based on how many different types of opportunities you are pursuing.
A lot of times I position entrepreneurs for business development and relationshipmanagement roles as this makes sense based on their proven success developing and retaining a client base. For an alternate target, I position them as operations or human resources managers, which is also a target that would make sense.
Another common approach is preparing a resume positioning a successful business owner as a consultant to other small businesses, allowing the entrepreneur to continue to run a business but perhaps have fewer clients and longer-term engagements.
Knowing that you have a broad skill set is a wonderful value-add to reinforce during an interview. But on your resume, be sure you are presenting a targeted and refined image of who you are as a candidate so you can compete against subject-matter experts out there.
Key to your success will also be your ability to leverage your network to open doors. More often than not I see past business owners find opportunities based on who they know, not what they know. Leveraging your network, and seeking referrals for open and closed market opportunities, will provide the third-party credibility hiring managers seek. Having someone explain your journey to a potential employer — combined with the unique skill set you offer — will alleviate some of the concerns surrounding whether you will return to business ownership in the near future. Through a targeted resume, an understanding of how you are marketing yourself and the willingness to tap into your business network, should open doors to a more traditional employer-employee relationship. Samantha Nolan is a certified professional resume writer and owner of Nolan Branding. Reach her at dearsam@nolanbranding. com, visit nolanbranding.com or call 614-570-3442 or 1-888-9523928. Meet her on Facebook, live on Thursdays at 12:15 p.m. EDT, for an extended discussion of this week’s Dear Sam topic.