Ask HN: How to join a startup after college as a liberal arts major?
It seems like everyone is looking for rockstars. What if you're just "hacker friendly"?
9 comments
It's not impossible but pretty unlikely that you're going to be able to join something really early-stage as a liberal arts major fresh out of college.
Join a larger startup that needs people to do joe jobs - customer support, account manager, etc. Suck it up, work your ass off, learn all you can, and get yourself promoted to something interesting. (Larger startups are still fairly fluid - at least compared to the broader corporate world.) Product management worked for me, but your experience might vary.
Once you've got a couple years of experience, and you've done something a little more meaty than entry-level work, you'll have something more to offer an early-stage startup.
Join a larger startup that needs people to do joe jobs - customer support, account manager, etc. Suck it up, work your ass off, learn all you can, and get yourself promoted to something interesting. (Larger startups are still fairly fluid - at least compared to the broader corporate world.) Product management worked for me, but your experience might vary.
Once you've got a couple years of experience, and you've done something a little more meaty than entry-level work, you'll have something more to offer an early-stage startup.
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Liberal arts like geography, anthropology and philosophy give you an excellent foundation for information architecture, business ethnography, user research and business analysis. A startup that's doing customer development instead of building something arbitrary should find those skills invaluable as long as you present them the right way.
EDIT: I graduated as a Geography major, with the pitch being that cartography is a very skilled form of information architecture and interaction design, as we use maps both as art and as a useful, tailored tool; geographic information systems mean I have experience working with demographics, statistics and spatial analysis; multiple anthropology courses mean I can research and present analyses on both the developing internal business structure and on our customers; philosophy means I can think critically.
EDIT: I graduated as a Geography major, with the pitch being that cartography is a very skilled form of information architecture and interaction design, as we use maps both as art and as a useful, tailored tool; geographic information systems mean I have experience working with demographics, statistics and spatial analysis; multiple anthropology courses mean I can research and present analyses on both the developing internal business structure and on our customers; philosophy means I can think critically.
Hey deafcheese, I wrote a pretty comprehensive post on this topic a while back. It's specifically geared toward helping students find non-technical jobs. http://www.jasonshen.com/2010/get-a-startup-job-out-of-colle... Also, here's some more info about the kinds of non-technical jobs you could get: http://www.jasonshen.com/2010/what-kinds-of-jobs-exist-at-st...
As an employer, the question I'm always asking is this: What value do you bring to my company?
When I get a generic CV I'm getting told what qualifications the person has, but rarely am I told what they might do for me to justify their wage. What skills do you have? Why are they useful to my business? Why will employing you make my company more valuable?
If I take funding for my company, the level of funding indicates a valuation of the company. If I take on an employee I'm saying that the value of the company rises by about 5 times their salary.
It's the same with a startup. How do they know you can do things that they will need done? Answer that question, directly, without hesitation, and with convincing examples, and there's a good chance they'll take you.
When I get a generic CV I'm getting told what qualifications the person has, but rarely am I told what they might do for me to justify their wage. What skills do you have? Why are they useful to my business? Why will employing you make my company more valuable?
If I take funding for my company, the level of funding indicates a valuation of the company. If I take on an employee I'm saying that the value of the company rises by about 5 times their salary.
It's the same with a startup. How do they know you can do things that they will need done? Answer that question, directly, without hesitation, and with convincing examples, and there's a good chance they'll take you.
I think a liberal arts major can be an exceptional strength to a growing company. Great code monkeys/hackers are quite common, but if you have a liberal arts background, with science background AND are hacker friendly, imho is a great asset for an established company.
If you have a major in philosophy try your hand at programming. After all, an undergraduate degree in philosophy usually comes with familiarity with a bunch of different logics and logical languages, you will have an advantage in understanding programming languages at a much higher-order level than your average computer science student who bashes through their degree for reasons economic.
Bring something to the table. It doesn't really matter what it is as long as it is valuable to the team in some way, shape or form.
What do you want to make that other people want enough to pay you? This question is important no matter how large the company is.