Business Start-Up Vs. Mid-Career Job Search: Which is Riskier?
The old rules of career change no longer apply.
Let’s say you join a company, degree in hand, at entry-level. You move up the ladder for fifteen, twenty, even twenty-five years.
Now you’re a senior manager in your mid-forties or early fifties. And you get laid off.
Or you’ve established a high profile. You may be a politician, a senior bank official, or a broadcaster. Following your much-publicized firing, you can’t just show up on a corporate doorstep to apply for a job. If you’re not invited in, you’ll be left in the cold.
Despite the siren call of business ownership, corporate executives and managers often resist the idea. “I just want another job,” some say. “With benefits.”
Risk-averse managers focus on the numbers: “Ninety percent of businesses fail. Most don’t last five years.”
The truth is that these days, your next job may not last five years.
Carlene, a fifty-year-old sales manager, experienced job loss following a merger. A truly gifted salesperson and manager, she does not have an entrepreneurial bone in her body. She held three jobs in the next five years, all shaky, each a step down from the one before, all miserable. She continues to haunt the recruiters.
