6 Reasons Why Analytics Professionals Should Target Mid-Sized Companies

You want to take the best path possible for your analytics career. You spend a lot of time looking at the Fortune 500 companies, big name brands and other large and impressive names. These places may seem like the best bet for your analytics career, but in reality, you usually deal with a narrowly defined job in a fragmented department. You don't get the range of experience you need to truly grow in your career -- not to mention the office politics at larger companies.Startups may seem like the natural alternative for avoiding stagnant career growth in analytics. You get a lot of responsibility with rapidly growing companies, but there are downsides to working for a startup. The first problem is the potential for the business to fail, especially if a round of funding isn't raised. The second issue is how working with multiple startups who haven't made a name for themselves looks on your resume.Ultimately, your best bet for short and long-term analytics career goals is going with a mid-market company. You get a good mix of the stability of a larger company with the responsibilities and potential for impact from a startup. Here are six reasons why this is the best analytics career decision.

1. Management isn't a set of distant faces. You don't wade through countless middle managers to get access to the decision-makers.
2. You aren't boxed into a single narrow set of responsibilities. You have a broad range of job duties to take on, helping you develop your personal skills. The teams are smaller, so you have more hats to wear throughout each project.
3. Mid-market companies have the agility to innovate with the means to do so. In comparison, startups may have excellent ideas but no resources for implementation.
4. Change happens faster in mid-market companies. One of the keys to analytics for testing and optimization is rapid iteration. You don't have to wait a painfully long time before you can implement changes.
5. A smaller company and less management means a lower potential for office politics. There's nothing that eliminates office politics in a company completely, but a mid-market company is less likely to have major office political factions that affect how well you do your job.
6. Your growth path is quicker because you aren't dealing with a company culture that keeps people in the same positions for years. The people ahead of you get promoted or change jobs, providing you with a quick advancement path. This is particularly true in high-growth, early-stage mid-market companies.

Choosing the right company for your analytics career path is an essential step in setting yourself up for growth. A mid-market company gives you the best of both worlds: the stability of a large scale enterprise with the opportunities of a startup.