If You Don’t Have these 5 Traits, Working at a Startup May Not Be For You

Working at a startup isn’t for everyone. Since certain personality traits are better for startup life than others, see if you’re suited for the job or need to up your game now:

Which types of people make the best new hires at a startup?

Do you have to be a mad genius in a turtleneck like Steve Jobs or can you be more chill and tinker around with your coworkers until you collaborate on a solution?

The truth is, it takes all types of people to contribute to a successful startup. But certain personality traits will get you more noticed — and garner higher appreciation — than others.

The Most Important Personality Traits Startup Team Members Should Share

Since almost everyone’s familiar with the “Big Five” personality traits, let’s start with how these specific ones relate to working in the startup world[*]:

1. Agreeableness. Being high in this means you’re a teamplayer happy to help with any issue. Ranking low in this means you’re basically a Slytherin.
2. Extroversion. Both introverts and extroverts work well at a startup as long as they find the right roles to fill.
3. Conscientiousness. While you’ll want to be diligent and finish your tasks on time, you don’t want to be so regimented that spontaneous creativity never has the chance to flourish. A middle ground is good here.
4. Openness means you’re (duh) open to new experiences and ways of thinking. Startups require tons of creative brainstorming and zero hesitation to progress so if you’re not open to disrupting or changing, why are you even here?
5. Neuroticism. People high in this will tend to worry and stall decision making while those low in this trait will decide and act swiftly without overthinking. In the startup world, the latter is preferred to the former.

Now even though these traits may encompass a lot, there’s still more to your personality than these five alone.

So hiring managers will also want new startup employees to have:

#1. Ambition, Passion, and Enthusiasm

These three traits all work synergistically so we’ll talk about them together.

Ambition is a strong desire to achieve greatness. All startup employees will need this type of drive and hunger to not only prove their startup is worth investing in, but that they’re worth having on the team.

Passion is something you can’t fake; you’ll either believe in the company’s mission and dedicate yourself 110% to the startup making real progress or you won’t.

Those who see working at a startup more like a regular clock-in and clock-out job instead of a passion project will not be happy to take on extra hours or responsibilities and this will hurt the team.

Also, it’s easy to be enthusiastic when your project is going well and everyone’s excited.

But true enthusiasm is what you’ll need when you’re working your third all-nighter or hit a major bump in the road and still have to keep going.

This type of enthusiastic energy is contagious and always welcome when the time comes to pump up teammates, customers, and investors — and it goes a long way with hiring managers.

#2. Resourcefulness

Since many startups have very few resources (i.e., time, money, personnel, etc.), you’ll be expected to Macgyver magic together with what your company does have.

So even though you may be hired for one position at a startup, chances are you’ll need to jump around and take on several different roles during the day-to-day operations.

This constant state of flux may rattle people who need clearly defined roles and standard ways of executing their tasks.

But if you’re resourceful and figure out how to adapt your skills and experience to complete jobs which are totally outside your wheelhouse, you’ll be a tremendous asset to your team.

This is where your true creativity and ingenuity will shine.

You do like solving problems, right?

#3. Initiative to Experiment and Take Risks to Solve Problems

A startup usually begins with an idea but only reaches fruition after years of experimentation with trial and error.

Most startups are a collection of problems that need solving on a daily basis.

So whether that’s figuring out funding or working through user experience bugs, all employees must be prepared to tackle issues head on — and figure out how to solve them with creative thinking.

If you’re the type to thrive on a challenge and not rest until you discover a solution, your brain will be a total advantage to a team actively working on growing and improving their product or service.

Highly curious people will not only want to know how everything at the startup works, their novel ways of thinking may spark new ideas to approach problems and concepts current employees have been struggling with too.

#4. Resilience

When you’re resilient, you have the ability to bounce back quickly after disappointment.

So instead of getting down about one of your ideas not working or an investor pulling out much needed capital at the last minute, someone with strong resilience will immediately recover from setbacks and find a new way to get the job done.

Rather than wallowing in a mistake or failure, which are bound to happen when you’re taking tons of risks and experimenting, you’ll need the strength to assess what went wrong and then jump right back in and do better.

#5. Cooperativeness

Circling back to our Big Five personality traits, being cooperative falls under the umbrella of Agreeableness.

Even though startups can take on several large personalities and egos with something to prove, the best employees are team players at their core.

Cooperative team players are receptive to learning what everyone else on the team does best. They don’t feel as if they already know everything and are the best themselves.

These types of coworkers know how to leverage everyone’s skills to overcome the startup’s weaknesses. They bring out the best in their team to produce cohesive work everyone can be proud of sharing.

Cooperative employees are also willing to do whatever it takes to put the startup first — even if it means their egos never get praised and credit for their contributions goes to the team.

Think You Have What It Takes?

Did this article just describe everything you tell hiring managers about yourself?

Kudos! You are definitely well suited to work at a startup.

So your next step is to check out Unicorn Hunt, the prettiest job board for users who are looking for startup specific positions around the world.

When you do find a job you want to apply for, don’t forget to read this to help you assess whether that specific startup is the right fit for you.