5 Tips to Help You Land Your Dream Job After Owning a Business

For some entrepreneurs, building a business is a lifelong dream that they’ll do anything to push to the highest levels of success. For others, it’s something to pay the bills in hard times. For still others, it’s a chance to try something new, make some money, and serve as a stepping stone into higher-level roles back in the traditional workforce.

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If you’re part of that latter group, you should see entrepreneurship as great experience. While there are many people leaving traditional industries to become entrepreneurs, the inverse is just as true. So, how do you stand out among the crowd of competitive applicants for those high-level jobs you know you deserve after running your own company? We’ve got some tips.

1. Keep Your Resume Updated

First and foremost, don’t let your resume get out of date while you’re running your business. It’s always smart to keep your eye out for any specific role you might be right for, but there’s also no reason you can’t cast a wide net.

With Resoume, you can create beautifully designed, ATS-ready resumes, portfolios, and cover letters that will beat the hiring systems and head straight to the top of the hiring manager’s pile. Best of all, it’s extremely simple. Just import your details from LinkedIn and Resoume does the rest. You can customize the result with themes, fonts, colors, signatures, images, and more to make sure it’s absolutely perfect. Resoume also offers analytics so you know how many visitors open your documents and you understand the kind of traction you’re getting. It will even help you keep your appointments and interviews organized to ensure you’re always ready to pounce on any opportunity. Find out why Resoume has earned 4.7 stars on AppSumo and was a number one Product of the Day on Product Hunt.

2. Find The Right Role

For many entrepreneurs returning to the workforce, simply finding the right role can be the hardest part. You’re used to setting your own hours, wearing multiple hats, and succeeding in a variety of ways. You may feel like a jack of all trades, master of none.

Take some time to talk through what you really want in a potential full-time role with people you trust. That could be friends, family, colleagues, or even clients. Get an idea of what your best skills and accomplishments are — those are what you do best and what you might want to do more of. But also think about what you like best about your entrepreneurial role — you won’t enjoy going back to a full-time job if you don’t like what you’re doing.

Eventually, you’ll get an idea of what the perfect role looks like for you. And then you can set out to find it.

3. Be A Team Player

After running a business, it’s easy to get focused on thinking about yourself and your needs at your place of business. But when you go back to the workforce, you need to make sure everyone knows you’re invested in the team.

When you’re interviewing, make sure you note that you’re excited to work with a team and, potentially, for someone else. Many hiring managers may be concerned that you won’t be able to work under somebody so reassure them that this isn’t the case and that you’re actually excited to be working as part of a team again.

4. Play Up Managerial Experience

All that said, you’ve run a company, of course you know how to run this business! Maybe you ran a company of one but that’s still impressive. You had to manage all of your company’s accounting, find new clients, and deliver goods and services on time — all while ensuring you’re making money, not losing it. That’s valuable experience that’s useful to any role, even if you’re not going to be your own boss anymore.

Rather than insist you know everything, present the experience you had running your own company as a good foundation from which to learn. You’re at a good starting point — probably better than most candidates — but you’ve still got more to learn. Hiring managers will appreciate the expertise you’ve gleaned in a variety of areas, just make sure not to overplay your hand.

5. Quantify Your Accomplishments

Interviewing for a new job after being an entrepreneur for a while is a bit like walking a tightrope. Yes, you want to demonstrate that you’re suited for leadership roles but you don’t want to make yourself come across as feeling overqualified or like you don’t want to report to anyone else. A good way to walk the line is by resorting to numbers.

Numbers don’t lie so, as much as possible, quantify your entrepreneurial achievements. Cite your accomplishments with real numbers, like revenue growth year over year, budget reduction month over month, and other metrics that paint a picture of you having a good impact on your own bottomline. If you can keep yourself in the black, that’s a good sign you can do that same with a fully functioning company.

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