Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep150: Choosing between working for an MNC vs Startup.

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

✅ Get FREE GUIDE, newsletter, join career program 👉 http://www.meiphing.com ✅ Corporate Survivor™ is the ultimate career course for 9-to-5 working professionals, just like *you*, who want to enhance corporate world mindset, skillset and strategy so you can NAVIGATE + GROW your career with clarity, confidence & opportunities... 🚀 ⚡ 📌 ABOUT THIS PODCAST: Welcome to Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing — ex-Corporate Leader turned Career Coach & Founder of The Corporate Survivor™. On this podcast, Mei Phing shares her corporate world insights, experiences and wisdom so you can grow your 9-5 career with clarity, confidence and opportunities. ✅ WEBSITE ⮕ https://www.meiphing.com ✅ FREE GUIDE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/freeguide ✅ NEWSLETTER ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/mondays ✅ CAREER COURSE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co ⚡

Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Global MNC, local SME, startup or NGO. So Mei Ping, where do you think is the best place that I should work? Because I want to grow my career and I'm getting all these job offers.

I'm looking at all these options for my next step, but I cannot decide. So in this episode, I'm going to deep dive with you what I think of some of the things that you should consider depending on which level you are in your career, maybe which type of company will be more suitable for your career growth. So if that's something you find helpful, then make sure that you listen to the rest of this episode. Now, let's begin by talking by defining what corporate means. So, as you all know, a lot of my clients and students are 9 to 5 professionals working in the corporate world in various positions across various industries from consulting, auditing, finance, investment, banking, financial services, engineering, actuary, sales, marketing, branding,

all these different, different departments. When I first told people that if you want to grow your career in the corporate world, you really need to understand what the corporate world actually means. And when I started telling people this, I noticed that a lot of people have an incorrect understanding of the corporate world. So in this episode, let me start by kind of giving you that definition first. So a lot of people think that corporate world means like a big company with thousands of employees and like a really, really big brand out there, right? So that's like when you think of the word corporate, probably that kind of comes to mind. So maybe you think of like huge brands, huge companies, the ones that you see on billboards, the one that you see on advertisement and so forth.

But I want to tell you that that is actually not true. A corporate is basically a structured organization. You really want to ask yourself, are you working in an organization? And what I mean by organization is that this company has multiple positions and it has multiple departments. So for example, in wherever you're working right now, does this company have a CEO,

a founder? Does this company have the sales department, marketing, product, operations, finance, tech, customer support, and so forth? If the answer is yes, then you are in a corporate. So one thing that you also shouldn't make a mistake to, from a perception standpoint, is to think that, oh, okay, it doesn't count as a corporate because all these functions are done by someone in a different country. No, that's called outsourcing, right? That's not corporate.

That's just purely outsourcing. It means that the company needs this function. It needs this role, but it's just not performed by the people sitting next to you. That's just what it means. So that's why understanding that corporate is a big definition. And as long as you are in a structured environment, you have clear roles and responsibilities, you have a clear department and responsibilities, and there's proper management and leadership, that is a corporate.

So this is particularly common because when a lot of clients and students first approach me who are interested to join my program, because obviously my program is called the Corporate Survivor, right? So the word corporate is like a big one. So a lot of them ask me to say, hey, maybe I'm in the public sector, right?

I'm working with healthcare. Or I'm kind of outdoors all the time. I'm an engineer. So is this considered a corporate or not a corporate? Now I'm just going to tell you the answer right now. It is a corporate. Do you have a clear, do you have clear roles and responsibilities? Yes. Are you working in a department? Yes. Do you have a department head? Yes. Are you working in a company? Yes. Do you have a department head? Yes. Are you working in a company? Yes. So you are in a corporate, right? But obviously, depending on the nature of your work,

that structure can look a little bit different, but you are still in a corporate, right? Okay, cool. Now that we got that out of the way, let's then talk about the differences or rather, you know, should you go for MNC which is like a bigger much bigger company more employees and more departments or should you work in a

startup which is a bit more a bit more flexible in that sense right it's a smaller company and so forth now I'll tell you what I have done and what I think will also works really well for a lot of my clients now if you guys are new to me I actually started my career in a local company. So I started at an SME and then I moved into an MNC for multiple years. And throughout the later career in an MNC, which is an international bank, I was actually leading the implementation and the launch of the FinTech department at Standard Chartered. Now, it's a new small department and therefore, it kind of works like a startup. Within that big bank, this part of my team kind of worked a little bit like a

startup. So, I think it's fair for me to say that I've experienced across the entire board throughout more than 10 years of corporate leadership career in the corporate world so I can tell you this now the answer is simple but not the easiest to come to a decision on so I'll tell you the answer is the real answer is it kind of depends on where you are in your career so let's talk about fresh graduate and after we talk about experienced professional if you are fresh graduate it's okay to start your career in a startup or a smaller company so i don't want you to feel like you always have to join a big mnc you have to join a big company to be called successful so that is not true so if you're a fresh graduate just starting your career it's actually okay to join a smaller company if you just kind of want to get a sense of like how everything works like learning the end-to-end a

little bit more of a holistic understanding of like how everything is connected so this is something that a smaller company does have an advantage on because if you go to a bigger company what's going to happen is that you're just going to do that one thing. But of course, right, there are many strategies that I also teach my clients to get more opportunities. But I just want to say that it's actually okay as a fresh graduate to start in a small company where you're going to learn the end-to-end, right? However, if you join a big company, then make sure that you're always being open to upskilling yourself and looking for opportunities to do new things so that you don't get stuck in that small thing that you're doing right now. However, I also do think, and this is something I've personally done in my career,

is that if you are a fresh graduate, somebody a bit younger in your career, I wouldn't recommend that you stay in a small company for a long time. The reason is because small companies or like startups usually if you notice like the way that they do things is like it's really all over the place and it's very messy so therefore you never learn the most important thing in corporate and that's structure structure is the bread and butter is the most important thing if you cannot understand structure you are you don't know how to build processes, you will never go far

because every time you're doing something, it's like a haywire all the time. It's like a disaster all the time. And therefore, you will not be able to progress in your career. You will not be able to take on more work. You will not be able to lead people or lead a department

if you never truly learn how to kind of like bucketize things. And I've seen that in a lot of clients who work with me or the students who first join my program, it's usually a bit of a disaster mode. And after they go through my program, they copy and survive a lot of clarity, a lot of like bucketizing and categorizing that we do as part of the skills development that really helps them to better manage. So that's just something that you really need to think about

if you're in a smaller company. So therefore, I would suggest that after working a few years, I would still recommend for fresh graduates or younger professionals to move to an MNC or move to a bigger company that offers structure. So it kind of allows you to learn the end-to-end process of kind of how things work, plus the structure, which will really make you very powerful. And that's the benefit that I've personally seen in my career as well. So moving on to the next one. So if let's say you are a corporate professional,

so somebody with a bit more working experience, maybe you have worked for three years or more, maybe three, five, 10, 12 years, whatever that is then um i would really encourage you to think about your career growth and think about opportunities more importantly think about exposure so for example if you're someone who has been working in an mnc for a very long time so as we all know right in bigger companies you do like this much right so maybe over the years right you feel like hey i'm i don't feel like i can grow anymore or i feel like i want um to do different things i want more exposure then maybe at this point in your career you can consider moving into a smaller company or you can consider moving into a more startup style sort of companies that allows you to have more responsibility, have more accountability,

and may also offer a better job title as well. So for example, maybe you are a senior manager, right, in a big MNC. However, to get to the director level might be difficult, right? First, you probably have a lot of competition. And second thing is that, you know, personal branding then is like a really, really big deal that you really need to put in not just effort but a lot of strategy around that as well and third thing is that you may not even feel confident that you can actually do the job right because sometimes at the msc level it's the expectation is really really high and it's not the easiest to get the promotion to the next level i'm just being honest here because this is something i've also seen in my career i'm very lucky to have gotten those promotions, like every one of it, like within 12 months. But

I can tell you that many, many people wait for like seven years and still do not get the promotions. But anyway, back to the working professional point I was saying earlier, is that you could consider joining a smaller company that offers you a more senior position but allows you more space to learn and to really take on a more senior role so that you can continue building up your leadership skills. And that's really, really helpful as well. So it kind of really depends on where you are in your career, which company works better for you.

But the point I want to get you guys to think about in this episode is, what does career growth look like? And making sure that you are selecting the right companies and the right roles to contribute to, to add value, depending on the juncture that you are in your career. And this is really something that kind of allows you to move forward. So nowadays, all this advice is something that I either do in my one-on-one private coaching, which is right now on a limited basis, but a lot of these things are some things that I discuss in my monthly group mentoring call as part of the Corporate Survivor Program.

So for those of you who may not know, I'm recently in the Corporate Survivor, which is my three-step program to gain clarity, confidence, competence, and visibility in the corporate world, I have introduced the monthly group mentoring calls, which is a live Q&A session on Zoom, as well as allowing students to learn from one another, and more importantly, allowing my students to ask questions on their career journey, and really in the process of getting more clarity and building more confidence also. So that's something that I think is really, really important and something that I also want to encourage. So in these sessions, in the Q&A,

it's really where I share a lot of my corporate leadership experiences, the decisions that I personally made in my career, what's the thought process behind all of these things, and what has worked for me, and what I've also seen worked in hundreds of my clients that I've worked with since becoming a career coach more than two years ago. So it's actually really, really powerful. And I think that it's a really, really helpful session that allows me to impart a lot of my

knowledge, my insights, my experiences, and just things that I've done that I know works and avoid the stuff that I know does not work, not just for me, but for hundreds of my students as well. And I think that's really the power of the mentoring part, right? And that's why you go to mentors, to learn from people who have already done and know the roadmap to success. And I think that part is really, really important. So with that, I want to know from you,

where are you currently working right now? Where do you want to work? And what else are you developing? From a skill set standpoint, maybe it's clarity, confidence, competence, what more do you think you need to become more successful at your current job? Your current corporate job is probably the best way to say it. So drop me a DM on LinkedIn and Instagram and let me know. I love to hear from you. I love to hear how you are settling in your career and what are some of your career goals for the next phase of your career. So drop me a DM.

Love to hear from you. And until then, I wish you all the best in your career and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.