17.6 Research the Company

Before any job interview, take the time to learn as much as you can about the company.  For starters, spend some time on the company website to learn about its history, its guiding principles, its services and products, etc.  If the firm is publicly traded, check out some analyst reports and/or annual summaries from the company.   Running the firm’s name through a Google News search can be a great way to learn about any major issues affecting the company and its employees at the time.   

If we were hiring for the Lobster Land analytics team, we might ask an applicant, “What do you know about us?”  If the person drew a complete blank in response to that, we would have cause for concern – after all, we would consider a new hire to be a significant investment on our part.  Before we would want to commit a lot of our time and money to someone, we would want to see that the person demonstrated enough commitment to us to at least learn the basics prior to the interview.  

The results of the Google News search can be particularly helpful for the end of the interview, when the interviewer asks “Do you have any questions for us?”  We know an applicant who recently received an excellent job offer from American Express.  Beforehand, she had done some Google News searches, and had learned about American Express’s recent acquisition of a financial startup named Bread.  During the “questions for us” segment of the interview, she asked about the Bread acquisition.  The interview panel was impressed by this – it showed that she had made the effort to keep up with industry news, and that she was paying close attention to the firm that she might soon join.