So you have scored an interview….cool. Now what?
After you make sure that your shirt is pressed and you have plenty of dental floss, you can move on to the research phase.
Research is not just looking up the address and the company’s stock price. It’s more than reading the company’s website.
Research falls into two basic areas: the person you are meeting and the organization for which they work.
Is the hiring manager on LinkedIn? How long have they worked at the company? Have they been promoted? Where did they go to school? Have they always been in this business?
Is the company public or private? What does the corporate structure look like? Where is the headquarters? Have they won awards or been recognized for special activities? Are they expanding? Do they have a new product line?
Investing this time will pay big dividends. It will give you just that bit of extra confidence when you log in and smile at the interviewer. It will also help you pick the anecdotes from your career that you are going to use as examples in the inevitable behavioral questions. You can pick stories that are going to really resonate with the hiring team.
The last and maybe the biggest reason to do all this research is to make sure that the organization is aligned with your own values and mission.
There is nothing worse than bragging about your new job offer to your friends and having someone ask how that massive product recall is affecting them or whether the class action lawsuit has been settled. Sure, it’s never too late to back out but wouldn’t it be better to have known about it from the get go?
Recruiter's Couch 