Howdy! Class of '13 here, and I am looking to make the switch from a Fortune 100 level company to a small/medium sized company in the Dallas area.

Background: I graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree and have been with the same company since graduation. I moved up quickly and loved the early stages of my career, but looking forward at what is ahead of me, I don't see myself enjoying "playing the corporate game" for the next 20+ years. After a quick stint in a smaller business unit within our company, I got a taste of how much I truly value that smaller company feel.

I have been a high performer my whole career, and made director level at a fairly young age. I have held a variety of roles in a short time across Supply Chain/Manufacturing, including project management, leading a several hundred person site, and corporate strategy. This all was great, but all of the quick moves and non-traditional roles does tend to make my resume look a little off in world of online recruiting where everything is screened for background and years of experience before a human ever looks at it.

I am reaching out to this job board to see if anyone might have any leads on a small to medium size company looking for a high performer with Supply Chain/Operations background in the Dallas area. Ideally, in a role where I am leading people and helping to build something bigger. OR, if anyone has made this jump from big corporation to small company before, I would love any advice.

Thanks for the insight!

How did you go about actually making the move? Finding the roles, tailoring your experience to what a small company is looking for, etc?

To elaborate on bizag07's post, some things were both good and bad depending on the day/circumstance.

At a large organization, the processes and procedures made a lot of things simple. However, there was almost no room for deviation/creativity. At the smaller organization, some of the "simple" things were a pain in the butt...but if you needed to wing it, that was ok.

As far as finding that type of position, you can look at vendors in your supply chain or competitors who are winning business by being creative. OR - find the gaps in the process and start your own!

I've worked at both (currently in a very small company)

Be prepared to wear a lot of different hats in a smaller company - many you would never have to even think about in a larger company that has the resources and personnel to compartmentalize most operations. In a smaller company you end up doing your job plus a whole lot of others.

Also be prepared for the sticker shock of things like health insurance costs. Big companies have buying power to leverage, small companies typically don't. You will either pay a lot more for the same type of benefits or pay the same for a lot less benefits.

Both have pros and cons, no one is really better than the other depending on what you do. Be very very careful during any interview process to find out about the people in a small company - smaller company means you have way more frequent interaction with pretty much everybody and you need to make sure the culture is the right one for you or the joy of that smaller more focused environment disappears very quickly.

Adding on to the benefits piece, a lot of small companies can't afford a match for a retirement account. I worked for a small company, about 170 employees, that offered a 401k that matched 50% up to only 2%. They had to scrap it after a year because it cost too much to maintain.