How To Explain Why You Want A Job After Owning A Business

Cover Letter How To Explain Why You Want A Job After Owning A Business J.T. O'DonnellOctober 24, 2022 Man explains why he wants a job in an interview

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There are a lot of business owners out there right now that might not want to own a business anymore. They want to work for someone else.

When you first become a business owner, you think you'll be doing this one thing you dreamed of doing all day long. Nope. That's only about 10% of your job. The rest of the time you're doing things that you hate doing in order to run the business.

I've worked with many people who've said, "I'm done running the company." But recruiters are critical of professionals who suddenly want a job after owning a business.

What Recruiters Are Thinking @j.t.odonnell Replying to @bookbae256 How to explain why you want a job after owning a business. #careerchange#resume#businessowner#jobsearchhelp#jobsearch#jobsearchtips#boss#career#howto#howtotiktok#explainyourself♬ original sound - J.T. O'Donnell

When recruiters see that you've owned a business, they're thinking a few things:

Did the business fail?
Is there something going on in your personal life?
Are you sick?
What's making you not be able to handle running a business anymore?
If you do work for us, are you going to be a know-it-all?
Are you going to want to run everything because you've always been in charge?
Will you get bored easily?
Is this going to work for you because you've never reported to anyone?

These are all the negative things that go through a recruiter's head when they see that you've owned a business and now want a job at their organization. Your job is to disrupt that mindset.

A Connection Story Is Key Happy woman on laptop writes a disruptive cover letter

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You're not going to disrupt that negative mindset by writing a good resume. How you do this is through your networking strategy and through what we call your connection story.

You need to create a great narrative, a connection story about what you've experienced and what's making you want to make this transition. Now, you're not going to be brutally honest, but what you can say is something like this...

"I've done all I can as a business owner. It's been a great and powerful experience. Yes, it's had a lot of upsides, but there are a lot of downsides, too. What I'd like to do now is work in a larger organization, bigger than the one that I've owned, collaborate with like-minded people, and learn and grow. When you're the only person, you're not learning or growing as much. So I think it's been a great run as a business owner, but now I want to learn more about this and I want to grow in this area. And taking on a job like this would give me the opportunity to do that. Plus, having run a business, I really understand what goes into it and how hard it is, and no one will be more respectful than me because I will understand what you're going through. So I will work like I own the business, but I'm not going to act like the business owner."

This is how you can shift a recruiter's perspective because you're able to explain to them valid business reasons why it would make sense to go and work for someone else. But that comes from your narrative, from your connection story, and the best way to share that is with your disruptive cover letter. This way, the recruiter is reading that story in your disruptive cover letter first, and then when they see your resume, they're not misinterpreting it. And that's really the secret to explaining why you want a job after owning a business.

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8 Ways You're Being SHUT OUT Of The Hiring Process1-hour workshop to help job seekers figure out what's getting them tossed from the hiring processCover Letter 3 Tips For Overcoming Your Biggest Job Search FEARS Jenna ArcandSeptember 28, 2022 Work It Daily's live event "3 Tips For Overcoming Your Biggest Job Search FEARS"

Work It Daily's live event "3 Tips For Overcoming Your Biggest Job Search FEARS"

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Why do I talk to my team every day?

In lean principles, many manufacturing teams have a daily management or “stand-up” meeting at the beginning of a shift. The purpose of this meeting is to have daily contact with employees, set objectives, review metrics, and simply communicate what is happening within the team. Common goals for this meeting include setting the tone for the day and helping employees feel connected.

Can this work for professional teams as well?

They Will Hate It… At First. Team meeting in the office

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I have been conducting a daily management meeting with my engineering teams for more than 15 years now. My meetings are NEVER perfect, and I have found them difficult to start with a new group.

Engineers do not behave like production, so these teams have been very resistant to my implementation of the daily meeting. “Why do we need to do this?” “We know what’s going on.” “We know what to do.” “This is a waste of my time—I could be coding right now.” Regardless of the words, these professionals resist the need to meet.

What I have found is that these daily meetings take several months to take hold. At first, everyone is resistant to taking 15-30 minutes every day to “talk.” Over time, you win over a few early adopters because they see the value of getting information. On a small team, this period is shorter. The larger teams always have one or two true naysayers who dig in.

The truly resistant teammates in the process are sometimes the very best reason for the meeting. They complain the most and get the most from the discussion. As the weeks pass, the biggest haters often convert into the greatest advocates. They tend to be the first to complain when a meeting is canceled because they had something to say. They feel engaged despite not “liking” seeing everyone each day. I find they secretly have learned to like these meetings.

Tips For A Successful Meeting: Team has a daily management meeting

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To begin, I have adopted my format based on each individual team. Time, place, duration, and content are dependent on the needs of the team and will change over time. The following are simply a few things I have found successful.

Same time and place — every single day: at first, you need to meet every day to build a habit, and I will not relent on this for at least a year. Location and time must also have consistency for the habit.
Minimize the agenda to a few key topics — initially, I begin with announcements for the day, a review of major projects, key milestones, and open concerns. If you have more than five topics, you will not be effective. Be concise.
Limit meeting time — always limit the conversation. Twenty minutes is my average, and I am consistently less than 30 with very few exceptions.
No one is permitted to skip the meeting without asking prior permission. I usually ask for 24 hours’ notice, and you are expected to participate unless you receive a pass for the day. Myself included.
Promptness is key — meetings begin at 11:30 am and make that known. Enforce it. Having the team show up on time is a level of respect for your teammates. Don’t allow tardiness to go unnoticed.
Allow for sidebar and silliness… to a point — not everything in a team needs to be transactional or business oriented. Many of my meetings have gone off the rails early and ended with good team building. If everything is transaction based, the team will have a robotic feel.
Allow the team to form the meeting — in the beginning, commanding control is necessary to build confidence in the process. Over time, allow the team to morph into what it needs to be successful. Many of my teams have abandoned my original agenda within four to six months and developed their own feel. The purpose of the meeting is for the team—not your own agenda.

(P.S. I used this very effectively during COVID-19, and when my team works from home, we still meet virtually to remain connected. These meetings do not need to have a physical presence to work.)

How Does This Benefit Me And My Team? Employees have a daily management meeting

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Connection—teams need to know they are connected and feel part of something greater than themselves. A good team builds rapport over time and learns to feed off one another.

I have built some strong teams in my career. My first team where I employed this process was very disjointed, and I had many lone wolves asking to be left alone. Give me my work, and get out of my way. Each person was great and a true expert in their niche. However, they did not work together to learn, grow, and become better.

I made many mistakes with this process, and after the first year, we still were finding our stride. In the second year, we began to gel. In year three, our meetings became more than expected. Problems were solved in minutes, not days. Issues were in the open versus the behind-the-back discussions. We won internal business challenges between teams by orders of magnitude. Everyone was in it for the benefit of the group—even the lone wolves. Years late after I moved on, two of my “toughest” engineers actually thanked me and missed those meetings in their career. They agreed they still hated the meeting, and they remembered how great our team performed.

Can you do the same? I say yes. The secret sauce is the discipline to push beyond the initial hatred and allow the process to grow. My mentor who asked me to begin this process knew I hated it as well, and he pushed me to keep trying. He could see the benefits before I could.

When a team communicates well, shares the same objectives, and solves problems openly, no one can stop their performance. Would you like to have this same experience?

Summing Everything Up... Team members support each other at work

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As I hinted earlier, I was an initial skeptic. I did not want to “waste” time with a 20-30 minute meeting every day. Add all our hours up over a year, and my lean mentor would show me the thousands of seconds lost! I persevered.

Remember, the key to the process is communicating. At first, you will be the leader doing most of the speaking hoping someone listens. Eventually, others will open up and share as well. Even the naysayers will pick up on some of the discussion allowing it to seep in slowly. Regardless, be consistent. Push the team to interact and develop the habit. Use command/control initially, and give the team room to breathe. See how it grows.

The first few meetings will be 100% for you as the leader. Eventually, the tide will shift and become about the team members. If you have an exceptional team, the discussion will become something even greater than imagined. You will see your team care for one another, discuss issues respectfully, and perform better than you imagined… all because you made them talk to each other for 20 minutes a day. Stating it like that, it is such a small investment with immeasurable returns!

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You have several business partners, but do they think of you as a trusted business partner and seek you out for your expertise, knowledge, and insights?

Years ago, I was hired to lead the Internal Audit Department at a bank. The group meticulously performed audits but wasn’t a “trusted business partner” who was sought out. We changed our processes, developed the staff, and turned around our reputation. I knew that we had accomplished this because we started getting phone calls from the business requesting our assistance and participation on projects. There was mutual respect, and they knew that we had their best interests in mind to help them.

How well do you understand how the business operates? Is the business doing things the same way because they’re so busy, and that’s how they’ve always done it? Or are there ways to make those business processes more efficient and effective possibly by leveraging technology better? It’s difficult to help the business if you don’t understand its operations.

What I Do To Be A Trusted Business Partner Man helps his friend climb a mountian

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I like to walk around and see what the business and end users are doing and, more importantly, how they’re doing it. Gathering information, analyzing, and taking the time to understand their operations. Finding out their needs, requirements, issues, and challenges.

I create Visio workflows documenting processes (if they don’t already exist). This helps establish what is actually happening versus assumptions and perceptions. This needs to be a collaborative effort, so make sure the business reviews the workflows and confirms that the processes are accurate. You can’t fix it if you don’t know what’s broken. Once you understand what’s happening (or not happening), you provide insights from a different perspective. Offering innovative ideas including automation which can result in significant improvements.

The business may already know that some processes aren’t as efficient as they could be. Ask how they think you (or technology) can make their lives easier. For example, maybe human resources is burdened with a clunky applicant tracking process. Or finance has to pull data from multiple disparate and siloed data stores, and it takes weeks to process month-end.

If possible, give the business the autonomy to take care of themselves as much as possible. For example, can the website be revamped so that marketing can maintain it (consistently providing fresh content) themselves? Or can an intranet utilizing SharePoint Online with sites (such as department, project, and community) be created that can be maintained by the site owners?

Create a plan setting clear and achievable goals and a timeline that has been agreed upon together. Communicate, communicate, and communicate. There will be more trust as each goal is completed and delivered on time. Stay involved, and the business will continue to seek you out as a valued resource.

For more information on being a trusted business partner, follow me on LinkedIn!

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J.T. O'Donnell reflects on lessons professionals can learn from athletes.

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How To Explain Why You Want A Job After Owning A Business

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