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I'm thinking of quitting my job and starting a business that might possibly fail within a year (I heard a lot of them do)
Will I have problems getting hired again if the business fails? Will this be a huge stain on my resume? Would it say that I might have a problem with authority?
I'm aware of this question, but the person who asked this didn't just tend to the business, which is what I will do
I might also do some open-source development if I have any idle time, just as in this question
Will I have problems getting hired again if the business fails? Will this be a huge stain on my resume? Would it say that I might have a problem with authority?
It might cause problems, but it might not.
Having a business fail isn't usually the problem. Switching from being an employee to a business owner and back to an employee again is usually the main issue.
I have hired lots of people who ventured out on their own, then (for whatever reason) decided to become an employee again.
One thing that I always worry about when hiring someone in that situation is - what is the chance that they will leave soon to try again? I spend a lot of time talking about that with candidates during their interviews. I don't want to hire someone for a short time while they gather their thoughts, only to have them venture out once again. I like to only hire folks who will be around for a while.
If you end up in that situation, you want to be clear in your own mind what you want to do - start another business eventually, or give up the idea and go back to being an employee.
If the former, you might consider being a contractor for a while, rather than a permanent employee. As Joel Etherton wisely states in his comment: managing contracts and billables and invoices and all the other lovely things about it help prepare people for the business side of things.
If the latter, then you want to be clear in your own mind how you can convince a potential employer during interviews that you really do want to be an employee again.
Will I have problems getting hired again if the business fails?
This is quite unanswerable. If the business fails but there is a huge demand for whatever you do then I'd likely think not. On the other hand, if demand dries up for what you do, which you never state, then you may have problems. Trying to isolate just to a business failing isn't likely a great idea. There were likely lots of developers that worked for various dot-coms in the late 1990s where the business failed and yet the developers are still working.
Will this be a huge stain on my resume?
Probably not though it may be asked of "What would you do differently if you started a business again?" or "What is the biggest lesson you learned in running your own business?" that would be fair questions I'd give in an interview.
Would it say that I might have a problem with authority?
I wouldn't take it that way though others might. I'd be more interested though in how you handle various hot seat questions I'd have about it and see what happens. Do you have vague answers that don't go anywhere? Do you have specific things that would be issues you could pinpoint now with the benefit of hindsight?
Course some may look at you and make all kinds of conclusions but somehow this may not be understood well.
What's the reason for failure? If you're a technician who didn't understand the market, that shouldn't hinder you from getting a technical position. However, if you had notions that you could "be your own boss" and work 4 hour weeks, so you failed due to laziness, I wouldn't want to hire you for anything.
What did you learn? This is as much about running a business as it is about yourself. You tried something different, but decided it is not for you and you want to be an employee. Sometimes people discover they're better at taking orders than giving them.
You need to be able to tell this story in your cover letter and be prepared to answer a lot of questions about it during the interview process. Make sure you convince yourself first before trying to fool anyone else.
It's not going to be a problem if you can talk about it in the interview. What I think is more problematic is your current mindset. If you are starting a business and planning for its failure before you even start, that doesn't say a whole lot about your confidence in your ability to run a business.
You have to start your business with the attitude that you're going to succeed, otherwise, you are dooming yourself to failure. Worrying about how your resume might look in a year should not even be on your radar.
