Guest Blog: Career Progression at an SME

An SME is defined as a company with fewer than 250 employees, and turnover typically less than £50m. An awful lot of businesses fall into this category, but around two-thirds of my career to date has been spent working for large, global organisations. These organisations often have very clear and defined progression routes, as well as the infrastructure, training programs and management in place to support them.

SMEs can often be just as structured, but being so much smaller, the opportunities are much less obvious. So how can you progress?

Exposure

The exposure you get at an SME can be phenomenal, and often taken for granted. You can generally walk over to anyone and ask them about what they do – mainly because the entire company is normally under one single roof. At large, multinational companies you could easily go years without seeing the CEO. A lot of people never see the CEO in their entire tenure with that company, let alone stand in the kitchen and chat while the kettle is boiling.

How can this help you progress?
Firstly, as a PA or EA you often support multiple, senior executives. Whilst you might be friendly with them all and chat to them like all your other colleagues, on paper you are supporting C-suite executives and that is a pretty big deal.
You will be supporting with the high-level work for which they need help such as Board papers and meetings with highly influential people within your industry.

Not only is it your exposure to your colleagues which is important here, but your exposure to the people with whom they do business. In the past few years, I’ve set up meetings with CEOs of global financial institutions, big names within the PR world, and even politicians and Lords.

Creation of New Roles

SMEs often need everyone to muck in and do things which aren’t in their job description. You have to be flexible to your company’s needs, which can result in your job role changing completely every few months. You take on roles for which larger companies would have entire departments.
During my four years working for two different start-ups, I’ve done social media management, contract negotiation and facilities management. I’ve managed teams of people, mapped out entire processes and coordinated the transfer of an IT support company. My CV is now awash with all of this amazing experience and I have a whole catalogue of contacts I can reach out to at a moment’s notice.
As the companies have grown, there has been a requirement to take on people full time to occupy some of these roles. Any one of these roles I could have moved into and developed as my own.
So whilst the roles might not be there immediately, and it might look like the only progression is to senior management, if your company is growing, those roles will eventually reveal themselves. You just need to put yourself in the position to be first in line for them.

Think of New Ideas

In larger organisations, there is often a lot of red tape. This means it’s difficult to get things done without a whole bunch of people having to sign it off. I’ve been in places before where
I’ve wanted to make a change, but it was just so difficult to get to the right people, I eventually gave up. Like the time one of the clocks was wrong on our intranet home page (there were about five world clocks at the top of the page). I spent about three weeks speaking to various departments, trying to get it fixed. After the fourth IT technician arrived at my desk with new batteries for the clock next to me, I finally gave up.

In SMEs, it’s often easier to make changes in your company – mainly because the decision makers are right there next to you. Being given the exposure to these people means that you can tell them your ideas and you could ultimately be responsible for its implementation (or you can at least help out on the project). For example, at one of the startups I worked, I came up with an idea for a new revenue stream. After talking about it at one of the management meetings, it was eventually rolled out and is now in place. I felt seriously proud that I had contributed something to the company. Knowing that management trusted me enough to let me run with the project was incredibly empowering, and it made me want to do an excellent job.

So, whilst it can feel like you are being pigeon-holed into a specific role in an SME, with little or no career progression initially obvious to you, the opportunities can actually be a lot bigger than you think. In large organisations, it can be difficult to move departments, unless someone else moves on from their role. At smaller companies, you get to have exposure to so many different roles, people and opportunities, that if the company is growing, you really could take your career in any direction you wanted to.

Yvette Pearson, visit Yvette’s website