A lot of companies now hire people with an entrepreneurial mindset as facilitators of continuous innovation. But is there anyone who doesn’t like the idea of entrepreneurship, or a job that doesn’t invoke some entrepreneurial flair? This post will take you through some steps to decode the dilemma of job versus self-employment.
So what stops people from being entrepreneurs? Why do we all get into the fix of job versus self-employment? Why are we not able to fulfil our passion? Is the job better, or are we better off being self-employed? Let us decode the dilemma in this post.
Paradoxically, a large number of people prefer to opt for jobs in line with the prevalent social order. There are so many questions: what if I fail? How much will it cost me? Am I really able to spin this off? Will this be profitable?
This ‘what if’ is a bottleneck in decoding the job versus self-employment paradox. On top of it, we have our very own society, which never likes to break the inertia.
Each one of us faces some issues in unlocking our real innovative strength. Here is a take that is far from perfect but at least a good start. Answering the questions below and doing some honest introspection might help decode this paradox. Included are a few entrepreneurial traits to test ourselves. Each one of us possesses these traits — the intensity just varies.
Let us first compare jobs and entrepreneurship. While entrepreneurship might seem like the trend, it does come with real cons.
Job vs Self-Employment — The Comparison
Full-Time Job
Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment
We have used entrepreneurship and self-employment interchangeably in this post for the sake of simplicity and easier comparison. We have assumed our readers already know what entrepreneurship is all about.
There are numerous other pros and cons for both that vary depending on your age, location, choices, interests and family situation.
The choice depends a lot on the industry you are in. In the hospitality and tourism industry, for example, normal working hours are long. Career progression can be uneven. Managing culture and office politics can be difficult. And a lot of hospitality jobs, barring the best-paid ones in the sector, are not compensated as well as other industries.
For these reasons, self-employment can be a particularly interesting option for hospitality professionals. Whether as a consultant, an event planner, a content creator, or a hospitality entrepreneur, the skills you build in hotels and resorts translate very well to independent work.
A lot of working professionals also tend to become moonlighters first — taking up a side hustle or freelance hospitality work before getting into entrepreneurship full time. That is often the wisest path.
Industries like information technology give a lot of creative freedom to employees — working hours and facilities are conducive to innovation, and some companies even provide employees with dedicated time for startups or innovative projects. In those environments, going full-time self-employed might not create meaningfully more freedom than staying employed. In the case of consultants or bankers, a full-time job would often be a lot safer than self-employment. Manufacturing and other labour-specific industries do not provide many pathways to self-employment either.
However, this again varies largely with choices, location, family background, and financial runway.
What’s Best for You? A Personal Checklist
Here is a checklist to go through that can help you decide if you are made for employment or if you should try your hand at entrepreneurship. These are honest questions. Answer them honestly.
Are you street-smart at your core?
We all are street-smart to some degree. Think about it — how would you have otherwise got the best deal in a sale, the last ticket to something, the free upgrade at a hotel, or some extra something for free?
There are numerous occasions when each one of us has done something that made us want to pat ourselves on the back. Take a tour through your memory and there will be plenty of such moments. They do wonders for confidence. So, how much do you rate yourself on a scale of 10?
If you rate yourself high on street-smartness, you have the raw material for self-employment. The question is whether you have built the rest of the toolkit around it.
Do you have a ‘who cares’ approach — well tamed?
A common perception is that entrepreneurs are fearless and have a ‘who cares’ attitude. That is not quite right. The difference is that they have learned to tame fear rather than eliminate it. They push themselves that extra mile. And that ‘who cares’ approach — the willingness to try something before you know if it will work — is possessed by everyone. The question is whether you have learned to use it deliberately.
There are people who do not even think about the question of job versus self-employment. They simply innovate regardless of circumstance. Are you more like that, or do you need a lot of certainty before you move?
Who is your idol or mentor?
Each one of us has an idol in life. It may be a parent, a teacher, a friend, a philosopher, or a famous person. Most of us have more than one. Now, introspect honestly: how many of us idolise someone outside our family who has been in a job throughout their entire career?
Most of us want to be like someone who took an alternate path.
We have a tendency to want to work beyond our potential, untamed and free of all restrictions. We want to live in a world with a free licence to innovate and imagine new things.
We all evolve through stages. Ratan Tata from India is an entrepreneur by soul, administrator by profession, and strategist by heart — and a philosopher overall. He once said: “I take a decision first and then work to prove it right.” Do you have the courage to move towards an unknown direction?
Do you learn to plan and plan to learn?
Most of us have heard “failing to plan is planning to fail.” But it is more important to learn how to plan. The lack of a proper planning process stops creative ideas from coming to the surface and being acted upon.
If not, start doing these things before you decode the job versus entrepreneurship question. The discipline of planning is what separates ideas from execution.
Are you an innovator?
There are numerous other parameters by which you can identify an innovator’s instinct in yourself. And if you do not fall into this category, do not worry — not many successful entrepreneurs or famous people tick every box either. What matters is the direction of travel.
Do you play it safe most of the time?
Your answers to these questions tell you a lot about your personality type and risk tolerance. There are also structured self-assessment tools like MBTI, MAPP, and the Big Five personality traits tests that can help you understand your strengths, weaknesses, and natural disposition — and whether employment or entrepreneurship is more likely to play to them.
Whether You Stay Employed or Go Solo — SOEGi Can Help
The Answer Is Already Inside You
A lot of people fall under different categories for different industries and at different stages of life. The point of this discussion is to help you realise your inner strength rather than give you a definitive answer. Because the definitive answer is yours to find.
The crux of the matter is a single question: do you want to follow an established agenda, or do you want to set your own? That is it. Everything else is context.
Job versus self-employment is a perpetual question and the grass is always greener on the other side. But the best companies — think of how Google gives employees time for their own projects, or how many of the world’s best hospitality consultants built their practices after years in hotel operations — are increasingly blurring the line between the two. Innovation and entrepreneurial thinking are valued whether you are employed or independent.
Please remember that there is one thing common to all human beings: limitless creativity and an immense power to innovate at will. We just need to explore these capabilities to meet the entrepreneur within us.
