In addition to using contacts to learn about the personalities of the people at the company, use personal contacts and the grapevine to find out anything you can about the company. This is the kind of information you should tuck away for future reference--something to verify during an interview and when you do your post-interview intelligence-seeking.
Employees of the firm can be an important source of information. Be grateful if someone other than the hiring executive calls you to confirm an interview date and time. Appointments are often set up by the human resources person, and this can provide you with an opportunity to do more homework. It is, after all, this person's job to fill you in on the company. But even a lower level executive or manager--someone who knows someone you know or someone you knew from college or business school--can be a gold mine of certain kinds of information.
Save the in-depth questions for the interview and go for general information that doesn't threaten the company. Find out started, whether it has any heroes, what makes its products so successful, what the weaknesses and strengths of its management are, and if you can, what kind of employer it is overall. Note: You probably won't get inside information on the kind of place this is to work at from a human resources person (their job, by and large, is to supply you with the party line), but almost any other contact may tell you the real story if you ask for it. Pay attention to gossip. There is often a kernel of truth in any item of gossip. Is the gossip mostly about the management style of the company? If so, what kinds of things do you hear? Is it a dog-eat-dog place, a place where heads roll when profits are low? Is there a star system, or are team players valued? Gossip about the latest product line is often more accurate than the current company propaganda. In this stage of doing homework, don't discount any bit of information, however minor, until you have had an opportunity to check it out. Store everything away for the day of the interview.
Know when you have done enough. Finally, because your time is valuable, it is important to realize when you have done enough homework on a company--as well as when you are about to go on one of those rare interviews where you don't need to do much homework.
Sometimes, it is important to gather general knowledge about an industry rather than specific knowledge about a company. One university administrator who was attempting to change industries recognized that, in at least one interview, there was little he could tell the prospective employer about how to run his business. The two men had been working closely for several months on a project involving their two businesses, and the job candidate knew how much his prospective employer knew: a lot. He recalled: "In the case of this interview, for a large bookstore operation that was branching out across the country, I took my knowledge of a bookstore operation on my campus and my understanding of the economics of that one and tried to translate that into other types of campuses and the kind of approach that might work on different campuses. This was a first-cut sales job, and if I had gone with this company, I would have gone into a market in a university setting and sold them on why this type of operation would be better for them than their present one.
"My credentials were one selling point; my experience was a second selling point, and my knowledge of this type of lease operation was yet another selling point. So there was no question of my getting a grip on the particular company before I interviewed with them. It was also privately held, so I didn't have access to an annual report. It was the industry itself and my personal experience that I was selling. I knew I couldn't know the inner workings of a company like this anywhere near as well as the president with whom I talked did. All I could do was familiarize myself with general trends. They couldn't expect more."
Know when you are selling generic skills. One woman who made the move from the public to the private sector a few years ago also found there was little she could do to bone up on the specific company. She commented: "Basically, I was interviewing with generic skills since I had management training skills that could be applied to any of several industries. There weren't a lot of times when I was expected to show off what I knew about a company or industry. I did enough homework to use some key expressions and terms. I learned that if you let people talk, and you listen, they like to tell you who they are. And if you just pick up the clues as to who they think they are, that can be as important as reading a financial statement." Only rarely, though, will you go on an interview where no real preparation is required.
Realize the limitations of homework. As noted earlier, most of the time you will use only a small percentage of what you know in an interview, and you'll be more impressive if you have all the questions in your mind rather than written down. There is really no point to filling your head with small facts, minutiae, and lots of figures. Doing so, in fact, may only make you panic during the interview, or worse, try to show off what you do know just for the sake of showing off.
See the following articles for more information:
- How to Start on the Right Foot in Your New Job
- What Are the Sources to Find the Information You Need
- The Background of Application Process
- How to Network and Take an Information Interview
