At the start-up stage the one thing you can predict is that almost everything will be unpredictable

Learning from the experience of successful entrepreneurs 1

Starting a new business venture requires a wide variety of skills. The reality is that the typical entrepreneur at the start-up stage as often as not lacks some of these. Sometimes more than some! He, or she, must learn, and in a business environment of ever accelerating change and increasing complexity, must learn fast, if their business is to have a reasonable chance of survival.

The so called ‘school of hard knocks’ is a great teacher. However, it is not the only one. Entrepreneurs can also learn from the experience of others. Vicarious learning can be of particular use when it is based on the real-world experience of entrepreneurs who have themselves successfully negotiated the tricky road that is the start-up one.

A US based group that specialises in providing support for business start-ups there has asked successful CEOs, all aged under 30 years, what it is they would have liked to have known prior to start-up. Their individual and collective views make for possibly the best entrepreneurial advice one could get. Over a series of blogs I propose to share some of that advice in a series that I will call – learning from the experience of successful entrepreneurs.

The first contribution comes from Scott Fineout, http://www.607magazine.com

 I wish I would have known how unpredictable things can be at ALL times. I read a lot before starting my business and realized unexpected things happen, but never did I realize the frequency in which they do. You really need to learn how to adapt everyday to things you may not have forseen waking up that morning.

Watch what you say on line. Your next job could depend on it.

An article by Tim Difford in thenextweb.com reports on a survey by Microsoft which not only confirms that HR recruitment professionals look online to gather information about prospective candidates, but also quantifies the extent to which this practice now prevails. Specific findings indicate that:

• 43% of European recruitment professionals routinely analyse prospective candidates’ online reputations before deciding whether to select them for interview.

• Content drawn from search engines, personal blogs, and social networking sites are all liable to be scrutinised in the process.

• Across Europe 23% of recruiters have gone as far as rejecting candidates based on their online reputation. This hides considerable country to country differences, ranging from 41% in the UK, to 16% in Germany and 14% in France.

• Germany, however, incorporates online data into its candidate assessments in 59% of cases, with lower figures recorded elsewhere across the continent.

• In the USA 70% of HR professionals admit to rejecting clients based solely on their web-presence.

• The most common reasons for candidates being rejected relate to “inappropriate comments or text written” by the applicant or “unsuitable photos or videos”.

• In Britain only 9% of people consider their online reputation to be a significant factor when applying for jobs, which, in all the circumstances is a surprisingly low figure.

There is only one conclusion one can draw from all of this: Watch what you say online – your next job could depend on it!