If you’ve been following our blog you have read the recent posts on spending your money, and volunteering in your community. While these are both excellent ways to help keep your community thriving, there is, of course, one more- you can work in your community. This is perhaps the way to help the community that it is easiest to see your own benefit, as this community service comes with a paycheck. Sometimes this is an easy decision, but sometimes there are other pressures that make it more difficult to see why working local is the best option.
The first scenario is not dissimilar to our example of the Mom and Pop vs. Big Box store from our first entry on supporting your community. Imagine for a second that you just got two job offers, one from a local company, and one from a corporate conglomerate. As you can guess, in our hypothetical situation, the corporation is able to offer you a bit more money than the local company. However, I would once again urge you to take the local job, for a few reasons that we will get into below.
First off, you will gain a more diverse skill set from working at a small company than you will working for a large one. At a big company you get a job title, you get a job with a specific purpose, and you learn how to utilize that skill set. If you work for a small company, however, you will not only learn how to do your job- but you will learn how to help the company in other ways.
Let’s use marketing as a window into the differences. A large company has a marketing department, or will outsource their marketing to a marketing firm. This means that you either work in promotion- or you don’t. There is little to no middle ground. If you work for a small company, however, they will want and need you to help them spread the word. This will afford you the opportunity to learn a bit about how the world of promotion works. You could be given access to social media accounts, be asked for input on radio and television ads, and be asked to start a word of mouth campaign. At a local company you never know what new skill set you could be asked to utilize.
It is also a good exercise to imagine what it will feel like to have each job in 5-10 years. Let’s say you work for IBM for 10 years, at the end of those 10 years you might see that you were there when IBM raised its market value by 10 points. You might be able to see that you were part of a time in the company when it made a lot of money. If you work for a local company, you might see a time when you saved a failing business, or that you got a company big enough to give back to the community. There is a tangibility to your actions working for a small company that a large company just cannot offer.
So, when thinking local, remember to think about your employment in local terms as well. You might be able to a lot of good for your community, and yourself, by choosing the local job!