Who Is Your Future Employer And What To Look For When Preparing For The Interview?

I have been researching some companies recently as I was applying for various roles in them. Call me picky, but I do my homework not just researching dry facts and statistical evidence of how company is doing, but also news/publications and employee reviews (glassdoor has been a great source for that). The reason I do it, because I’ve seen a lot of unhappy employees and I have been there myself. You wouldn’t want to work for a company where morale is lower than a floor or if you are stuck and are willing to accept it, you should be at least prepared having realistic expectations. It’s better to have a pleasant surprise than a bitter dissapointment, because during the interview you might be offered a lot of things that are probably never going to materialize. If you are looking for a job and going through interview process, please, please do yourself a favour and research the company not just from a factual/product perspective. You don’t want to go for a job you are going to hate.

So, where do you start? Here are 6 sources I use for my prep:

1. Check if the company you are researching is public or private. If public then head to Google finance and check out their shares or fluctuations of the price. Google is also going to offer you an insight of press releases and announcements that might have triggered spike or drop. Management changes sometimes can be a great example in price shares.

2. Look up company’s official blog and see if you can find anything about culture. Brands sometimes are doing interviews with their best and brightest professionals as well as top management. This could also be great material to prepare you for the interview as well as a source for any questions you might want to ask.

3. Publications, news articles. These can be a great “gossip” source to give you a hint of what sort of things a company might be dealing with. Don’t take everything for granted, but there is probably going to be some truth in those. If not, you’ll be in the crowd who is going to be doing explanations too.

4. Glassdoor has been a great source for me personally. While I understand that not everything would be relevant to your location and team, it could give you a general overview of how company is dealing with internal culture.

5. LinkedIn is a professional network, so why not to use it for your research? See if you have any connections that could introduce you to current employees or might tell you more about the company. Even former employees can give you a great insight. Don’t be shy, people don’t bite. The worst that can happen, you are going to be ignored.

6. Social media. Yes, most of your future employer’s customers are online. Social media has enabled customers to lead a conversation. What you can do is listen. Listen to what customers are saying about the brand and to the brand and see if the brand is responding and how it is responding. If there is a one way conversation with a brand talking at people, well, they are not really up to speed with trends, which might mean that any changes to enhance business processes within the company are most likely not happening and are hard to influence. I am not sure about you, but I certainly hate talking to the wall.

With all that, I wish you best of luck with your career! My last piece of advice is don’t slack off! Do your research properly!