In a recent article published in the Wall Street Journal, reports state that twice as many graduates from top MBA programs in the country are still looking for jobs 3 months after graduation than last year.
Kristen Fitzpatrick, Managing Director overseeing careers at HBS said that in a tough job market “Going to Harvard is not going to be a differentiator. You have to have the skills.”
The founder of the prestigious startup accelerator program Y-Combinator that has incubated companies like Airbnb, Reddit, and Stripe, Paul Graham referenced the same article in a tweet predicting that “This is a secular trend. The pendulum will never swing back.” In other words, this is not just a cyclical phenomenon of a difficult job market.
With tech CEOs anticipating that 2025 is the year that AI agents begin to be powerful enough to execute many of the administrative and manual tasks that a typical entry and mid-level worker would do, students and recent graduates are starting to wonder how they can ensure their employability in a rapidly evolving labor market.
Much of the entrepreneurship content out there advocates for thinking big and going all in, or alternatively starting a side hustle that can create an extra income stream for you, but there’s a third less often discussed benefit of trying your hand at entrepreneurship: employability.
Regardless of the economic situation, companies are always looking for enterprising people, and now more than ever you’re expected to have the skills necessary to be useful in a job from day one.
The reason that MBA grads are finding it difficult to get high paying jobs as quickly as they did in the past is not because the programs they’re part of don’t build valuable skills, it’s because employers want to see a history of actual output.
And when it comes to entrepreneurial endeavors, the only thing that really matters, and what makes you an entrepreneur, is not your idea, or the market research that you do, but the outcomes and success that you have.
What’s not often talked about is that you don’t need to have a multi-million dollar business or exit to increase your value in the job market once you move on from your business, you just need to have a series of small successes and demonstrable outcomes that you can use as powerful stories in your career narrative.
Here are a few things to think about when building a business that will help your future employability.
Choose a business in an industry you like or want to learn a lot about
Entrepreneurial success often depends on your ability to learn an industry quickly, and create informed opinions about where the market is heading and where there are currently gaps. Likewise, your employability is dependent on your understanding of an industry, the products in the market and the needs of the customers.
If you spend 3 months talking to hundreds of potential customers in a particular segment to identify a product or service you can sell to them, you will build more expertise about the customers’ needs, even if you never make a single dollar from your business endeavour, than someone else spending a year researching and reading about the space.
Decide what kind of a founder you want to be
Entrepreneurs build many different skills that are valuable in the workplace. From sales, to product development to recruiting. But at some point you need to decide what you really want to get good at. Not only will this help you figure out what complementary skills you need on your team, but it will help you understand how to market yourself to employers in the future.
If you’re thinking of starting a consumer brand, you can choose to focus on creating a great product and having a strong supply chain operation, or you can focus on really understanding the marketing and how to build awareness and distribution channels. Are you an entrepreneur who is obsessed with the operations, or with the revenue generating activities?
There may come a day when you have to decide how to position yourself in a resume or job interview, and it’s useful to focus on honing your entrepreneurial skills for a job you can actually see yourself doing.
Focus on results and traction
Whether you work on your business for 6 months or 6 years, the results of your activities will hold greater significance in the market than any advanced degree could. Your first job as an entrepreneur is to make money, but your second job is to build an arsenal of experiences and achievements that you can use as leverage to get opportunities in the future.
Launching a complicated product, growing an email list from 0 to 1000, closing a sale from prospecting to signed contract, getting your business featured in the press, hiring and managing a team of influencers, etc., these are all examples of real output that impress employers no matter how old you are, what education level you have achieved, or what companies you’ve worked for in the past.
With each business achievement you significantly increase your ability to tell great stories that can translate to job opportunities.
Final thoughts
Few people set out to start a business with the idea of getting a job in the future, but the real impact on your marketability in the job market can reduce some of the perceived risks associated with entrepreneurship.
The costs of starting a business are progressively getting lower every year and you no longer have to take on great personal financial risk to try to build something.
The job market is constantly evolving, and the reality is that everyone is now competing against experienced talent around the world, and ever more sophisticated AI systems that are making menial jobs all but obsolete.
Developing an entrepreneurial mindset and working on ventures of your own is one viable path to mitigating economic uncertainty. After all, if companies won’t give you a chance to get the experience you need to be successful, you might just have to create that experience for yourself.