Prep for a Surprise Interview with Quick-but-Deep Internet Research

The scenario: You’ve been called in to interview with a company that you know virtually nothing about — and the interview’s tomorrow. While you’re excited that they want to recruit you, you’re sweating bullets at the thought of giving meaningful answers about this mysterious organization.

The answer is quick, simple, and painless. Just turn to your computer. Research nowadays is easy, and often free. There are a wealth of great sites and services that specialize in getting you up to speed on an organization.

1) Start with your basic homework.

• Read the company’s website, paying special attention to the annual report and press releases.
• Hoover’s has free look-ups of businesses with in-depth reports about them. Input the company name, and read away.
• Do a search for news stories about the company, written by an objective journalist. Try Reuters and this compilation of business trade articles.
• Review what you’ve learned. You’re going to want knowledge of products and services, market positioning, company leaders and organization, culture, and compensation.

2) Then get a little more advanced.

• Look up the company’s leaders, and the person interviewing you, by name on ZoomInfo. Don’t tell them that you did this, but use every morsel you find.
• I like this easy pathfinder for company research from the Los Angeles Public Library.
• If it’s a publicly held company, they must file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
• WetFeet is a fantastic resource. Check out their list of major employers.
• Google the organization on the ‘wonder wheel’ setting to show you related searches you might not have thought of (and the company might not WANT you to think of).

3) Check out what current and former employees say.

• GlassDoor has anonymous reviews of company culture and insider salary info.
• Look through your contacts on LinkedIn, and see if anyone in your greater circle works there, or has worked there. Ask for an informational interview, perhaps a 10-minute phone call.
• Run searches on the company name plus positive and negative terms such as ‘great place to work’ or ‘sucks.’ You might be surprised what you can find.
• Search on Twitter for the company’s name as a hashtag.
• Utilize Google’s Blog Search function to find out what regular people are writing about the company.

4) Don’t forget about researching the entire industry and the top competition…

• Hoover’s has more than 600 fantastic free ‘industry overviews’ to place your hiring company in a wider context.
• Capital IQ, Lexis-Nexis, and OneSource can all help with this, but usually require a license to use.
• WetFeet has a free directory of industry guides to check out.
• Do a search on the company’s name plus the term ‘poach.’

With a small amount of intelligent, targeted research, you can be ready for a surprise interview with just 2-3 hours of research conducted the night before.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Career, Career Coaching, Interview, Job Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.