First of all congratulations. I think you’ve made a choice to look at some exciting career options, and thats a very good thing. Once you are willing to look at startups as well, as an option, a whole new world opens up. Yep, it does.

So here goes the first question. Do You want a job, or do you want to work for a startup?

If you said yes to the first one, you don’t get to pass go, nor collect 200, but go straight to another fabulous job portal and upload that resume. If you said “work for a startup”, then you need to read more.

See, working for a startup is not rosy. It’s probably the second most craziest thing to do. The first one being, starting a startup ofcourse!

All jokes apart, these are some characteristic traits that you NEED to have, if you want to work for a startup. Here goes the list.

1. Self Motivated and Task oriented. No one in a startup is going to tell you what to do, how to do it and when to do it. But sooner or later someone will come and expect that it you deliver it. So, if you are gonna be working for a startup, its going to require that you know what is needed and burn some post-it notes, and be ahead of schedule – your own schedule.

2. Friendly Attitude. There are possibly only going to be five or six people in the entire company besides you, so it does help to have a friendly and outgoing personality. You certainly don’t want to contribute to a scenario where working in your office feels like working in the mortuary.

3. You should be an expert in something. There should be something that you are an expert at – even if its a game of solitaire. Startups need people who are outstanding achievers. Without them, there is no hope at even making a dent against the giants you want to dance with. If that one thing is a programming language, or the ability to sell even your grandmother’s spectacles, great!

4. Learn Fast. Now that you know one thing very very well, there are going to be a few dozen other things that you need to pick up on the fly and master it well too. If its Ruby on Rails, or that Javascript Toolkit, or that new programming language, you should be able to see a few samples, read the code, and be able to whip out a prototype or so pretty rapidly. If you are in the business side, you should pick up trends, and acronyms as if you were born speaking it. Do you show any signs of learning fast?

5. Never, Never be lazy. I sometimes get calls from people who want to know what the Startup Lunch Program is about. I usually want to hang up on them and say its something which is not for them. Do not expect people to spoon feed you. All it takes is a google, or a url type-in and you’d understand what its about. So if you are a lazy person, and can’t even google up something before asking a question, nope, you need to cultivate that habit, or look for something else to do.

6. Dedication – Iron or Steel?. How long does it take for you to start believing in something? How long does it take for you to realize that it wont work out and quit that option. This is probably the most crucial question to ask before you make that plunge. I’d prefer the guys who are like steel getting magnetized – slow to be magnetized, but keeps the charge much longer. We dont like quitters in a startup.

7. You need to be a dreamer. Dream and dream big. The only way to remain sane in a crazy world is to become a little crazy yourself. Working for a startup is like living on the sets of Alice in Wonderland. Unless you are a little crazy, you are going to be having a heart attack. How much guts you have, and the vision to make those dreams come true, will matter.

So it really doesn’t matter if you are a fresher, or have ten or thirty years of experience. If you have what it takes, a startup is a great option to look at. All that said, ask the right questions to the founders, and be fully convinced before you join. And if you do join, don’t quit before you have achieved what you set out to do – no matter what happens. If you can’t commit to that, stay away from startups. Working for a startup is not for the faint of heart, and there is no shame in admitting to that early on, than be sorry later.