Fearless Money

This weekend in a book review on Amazon, I read someone who panned a book on startups, worrying about “gaps” in work history on the resume. The fear was that starting a business, and then having that business fail would look bad on a resume, since it would leave a “gap”. It would then make the person unemployable, or be a big disadvantage when going back to corporate life.

I think this has to be pure rationalization, or else intensely misguided advice from a high-school guidance counselor. I say that with confidence, since nothing could be further from the truth.

Business experience is a huge advantage

Paul Graham’s excellent article, Hiring is Obsolete makes this point abundantly clear. It is difficult for companies to find stand-out employees, so one thing they do is look for people who are self-motivated enough to take advantage of the extremely low barriers to entry of business today.

Even if your startup does tank, you won’t harm your prospects with employers. To make sure I asked some friends who work for big companies. I asked managers at Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Cisco and Microsoft how they’d feel about two candidates, both 24, with equal ability, one who’d tried to start a startup that tanked, and another who’d spent the two years since college working as a developer at a big company. Every one responded that they’d prefer the guy who’d tried to start his own company. Zod Nazem, who’s in charge of engineering at Yahoo, said:

“I actually put more value on the guy with the failed startup. And you can quote me! “

So there you have it. Want to get hired by Yahoo? Start your own company.

Personal experience

I’ve personally hired a couple dozen people in my career. I can honestly say that I have never once taken the time to line up all the start and end dates of jobs. I don’t have the time, and it doesn’t mean much. People take time off for all sorts of reasons, the best of which is to try their hand at starting their own business.

As an employer, I personally value people with real-life experience in business since they are the most likely to understand what I want and need. Similarly, if a programmer was a manager at one time, and decided that life wasn’t for him, he is still a much greater asset to the programming team, since he now understands what motivates management.

So, drop that objection!

Worrying about gaps is foolish and merely sets you up for failure. There are legitimate reasons to do due diligence and to carefully consider your business plan, but gaps (and self-employment tax - another article I need to write) aren’t one of them.

Technorati Tags: startup, resume, hiring